Keywords: Control , Hardware , Experiment telerobotics with/without force feedback, Immersion Impulse Engine, RS232

Experiment with telerobotics

I3) Experiment

Interface: Immersion impulse engine 2000 (Haptic Joystick, 2 DOF)
Slave: simulated robot in virtual environment

4) Experimental procedure

- teleoperation withhout force feedback
- teleoperation eith haptic feedback
- telerobotics without force feedback (semi-autonomous slave with collison avoidance)
- telerobotics with haptic feedback (semi-autonomous slave with collison avoidance)

7) Conclusion

A number of experiments have been performed to test the hypotheses:
1) that teleoperation performance can be improved upon if haptic feedback is introduced
2) telerobotics yields improved performance over teleoperation alone
3) telerobotics when combined with haptic feedback yields improved operator performance over that of telerobotics alone.

Whilst the results obtained have substantiated hypotheses 1 and 2, hypothesis 3 has proved more illusive. When a remote robot is equipped with some autonomous behaviour, e.g. collision avoidance, then this telerobotic capability is extremely useful when manoeuvring the vehicle in a cluttered environment.