Control of multi-fingered haptic interface opposite to human hand

Haptic interfaces, which present force and tactile feeling at human fingertips, are utilized in the aria of tele-manipulation of robots, simulation and design in virtual reality environments, educational training, and so on. The haptic interface is demanded to be safe, to work in wide operation space, and to present not only force at contact points but also weight feeling of virtual objects, to have no oppressive feeling when it is attached to humans, and to have no weight feeling of itself. This paper presents a control architecture of the developed multi-fingered haptic interface, named Gifu Haptic Interface. The haptic interface was designed to be completely safe and to be similar to the human upper limb in shape and motion ability. The interface is placed opposed to the human hand, which brings safety and no oppressive feeling, but causes difficulty in controlling the haptic interface because it should follow the hand poses of the operator. Two control methods of the haptic fingers are tested and two approaches to oppose the interface hand to the human hand are studied. A computer graphics simulation and experiments are also presented.