Force sensing for remote tele-operations

Tele-operated robots are increasingly being used in operations such as hazardous waste handling, subsea pipeline inspection and repair, telesurgery, battle field robotics, and construction in space. These tasks require a highly flexible and intelligent control mechanism and are considered achievable through well balanced and co-ordinated human-robot interaction where the human operator is 'projected' into the scene using visual and touch (haptic) sensory information.

The aim of this work is to develop a haptic interactive system where a force sensation can be effected to a human operator. This can be used independently or as a complementary device to a visual telepresence system, generating the 'feeling' of the exsistance of a virtual object or conveying the remote environment constraints. This is conjunction with our work on human co-operative control and Augmented Reality.

The MSRR people involved in this work are Prof Graham Parker, and Wai Yu.

Further information :-

Prof Graham Parker
School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering,
University of Surrey,
Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom.
tel : (01483) 879283 fax: (01483) 306039
email: g.parker@surrey.ac.uk