Comparison of human-machine interfaces designed for novices teleoperating multi-DOF hydraulic manipulators

Hydraulic manipulators are commonly used for tasks that require large forces over a large workspace. Current hydraulic manipulators are often operated using individual joint control. Since many of these manipulators are long kinematic chains, such as excavators and concrete pump trucks, it can take years of training and experience to become a true expert operator, resulting in a large number of novice operators. Haptics and coordinated control have been shown to improve various operator performance measures such as task completion time and the amount of applied force. This paper outlines a novel coordinated control scheme and shows that coordinated position control is feasible for slow and/or large-workspace manipulators. It discusses the results of these two coordinated control modes with and without haptics on operator task completion time. The performance of a single expert operator is provided as a comparison. This paper also includes a fuel efficiency measurement absent in previous work. The results are benchmarked against current joystick control.