Information transformation-based tele-robotic systems

In teleoperation tasks, information about the relative posture between end-effector and the object to be grasped is of key importance for human operators. Although visual information plays a major role in monitoring collision and fun-tuning the end-effector towards the object, the operator should make strict observations about the video images to take precautions against collision between robot and the object. As a result, operators might miss or neglect the advance notice of collision. In view of this problem, an information transformation method is put forward, which converts visual information to haptic/force information and is used to signal to the human operator the posture of end-effector relative to the object to be grasped. In this method, visual information obtained from a monocular camera is transformed into haptic/force information to which operators are more sensitive. The transformation method conveys a realistic sense of the state of operations and allows high operability of the system. Finally, experimental results are presented which demonstrate the effectiveness of the implemented method.