Design of a Multifingered Robot Hand and User Interface for Force-Transparent Teleoperation

Luke Batteas, Oliver Sterling-Angus, Yufeng Yang, Patrick Dills, Kevin Lynch, J. Edward Colgate

Keywords: Teleoperation, Robotic Dexterity, Haptic Feedback, Force Feedback

TL;DR: Rather than combining many different products, a teleoperation setup may benefit from the co-design of a robot hand and a kinesthetic haptic device, to enable the faithful display of environmental forces to the human operator.

Abstract: Teleoperators consisting of leaders (e.g. haptic interfaces) and followers (e.g., robot manipulators) have the potential to enable remote completion of many useful tasks; however, for tasks that require high manual dexterity, the limitations of these systems becomes more apparent and problematic. One notable discrepancy between teleoperation and direct human manipulation is the wealth of tactile and kinesthetic information intrinsically available to humans. Current robotic manipulators, especially hands, are not well equipped to measure and control tactile and kinesthetic data. Moreover, current haptic displays, when used as leaders, are not well-equipped to display those data while remaining in tight coordination with followers. In this work, we explore a co-design philosophy to enable highly transparent fingertip-level force feedback for teleoperation of multifingered hands.

Submission Number: 18