Experimental Telemanipulation Site

The current experimental site can be broken down into three systems :

Master system : made up of the arm of the operator equipped with a force feedback data glove and a three dimensional position and orientation sensor (Polhemus).

Virtual slave system : made up of a virtual manipulator arm with six axes equipped with a gripper and a virtual environment including virtual objects. A virtual camera allows changing the point of view.

Real slave system : composed of a six axis robot manipulator supplied with a five finger artificial hand. Real objects identical to virtual objects are placed on a base inside the robot's work space.

The experimental stages use different combinations of the three systems:

Virtual telemanipulation : master system and virtual slave system;

Direct telemanipulation : master system and real slave system;

Simultaneous real and virtual telemanipulation : master system and virtual slave system and real slave system.

. The angular sensor case is attached to the operators hip. He is thus free to make any movement in space within a $5$ meter radius. The position of his head with respect to his body in continuously measured by the three dimensional sensor (Polhemus) whose transmitter is also attached to the hip. The slave system is also made up of a six axis robot equipped with a three finger gripper with $1$ $dof$. The operator only controls the opening and closing of the gripper fingers with his own fingers. The squeezing force is always constant.

With this telemanipulation data site we carried out three types of experiments :

Virtual Telemanipulation

The operator is seated in front of his screen and observes the animation of the virtual scene. With his force feedback data glove the operator carries out a virtual task that consists of grasping and displacing an object without collision.The operator can repeat the manipulation a number of times before validating the task which will then be saved and sent for performance to the real robot.

Direct Telemanipulation

The operator with the force feedback data glove on his hand is standing at a distance of two meters from the robot. While observing the movements of the robot, the operator corrects the movement of his hand in order to get closer to the object to be grasped. The operator can get closer to or farther from the robot without affecting the robots configuration. The position of the terminal point of the robot is controlled by the 3D position and orientation sensor

Virtual and Real Telemanipulation

As in the previous experiment, the operator carries out a grasping and displacing of a virtual object while uniquely observing the virtual environment on his screen. The real robot thus follows in real time the movement of the virtual robot and executes the grasping of a real object voluntarily placed in the exact relative position.

Video Demonstraion (Vilette95, 127.4Mo, avi)

Video Demonstraion (Vilette95, 23.8Mo, mpeg)

Video Demonstraion (Poitier96, 46.8Mo, avi)

Video Demonstraion (Poitier96, 7.8Mo, mpeg)

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