In this paper, we will describe our attempt for a tele-operated humanoid robot to drive a backhoe. It will be possible for a humanoid robot to drive an industrial vehicle instead of a human operator. If a humanoid robot can be operated by a human operator from a remote site, it enables t o USI a general type of vehicle safely in a dangerous field. We introduced a backhoe as the target vehicle to show the possibility of driving a vehicle in a sitting posture. The robot sits down with balancing on a cockpit of the backhoe and manipulates control levers for driving. We developed a portable remote control device and remote control methods to operate the humanoid robot. For the evaluation, it is tested to sit down and manipulate the levers on the driving cockpit of the real backhoe. To compare it with a human's work, the eficiency is close to practical use.
So far, there have been many conceptual discussions about semiautonomous control (i.e. cooperation between manual teleoperation and autonomous functions), but little discussion about its formulation in the control level and how to change from manual control to semiautonomous control and return to the manual control again. In this paper, we propose six operation modes f o r cooperation between manual operation and autonomous functions in intelligent teleoperation systems. We also specify the sequence of mode change so that the operator can change these operation modes intuitively and smoothly. W e describe control schemes of master-slave arms an each mode based on the new bilateral control scheme which has been previously proposed by the authors. We experimentally confirm the validity of the proposed operation modes and the mode sequence by using a simple one-DOF master-slave manipulator system. It is shown that task efficiency is improved and the burden on the operator is lightened b y introducing the proposed method.
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