A Shared-Control Teleoperation Architecture for Nonprehensile Object Transportation

Abstract

This article proposes a shared-control teleoperation architecture for robot manipulators transporting an object on a tray. Differently from many existing studies about remotely operated robots with firm grasping capabilities, we consider the case in which, in principle, the object can break its contact with the robot end-effector. The proposed shared-control approach automatically regulates the remote robot motion commanded by the user and the end-effector orientation to prevent the object from sliding over the tray. Furthermore, the human operator is provided with haptic cues informing about the discrepancy between the commanded and executed robot motion, which assist the operator throughout the task execution.We carried out trajectory tracking experiments employing an autonomous 7 degree-of-freedom (DoF) manipulator and compared the results obtained using the proposed approach with two different control schemes (i.e., constant tray orientation and no motion adjustment). We also carried out a human-subjects study involving eighteen participants, in which a 3-DoF haptic device was used to teleoperate the robot linear motion and display haptic cues to the operator. In all experiments, the results clearly show that our control approach outperforms the other solutions in terms of sliding prevention, robustness, commands tracking, and user's preference.

Haptic shared control improves neural efficiency during myoelectric prosthesis use

“…Haptic shared control approaches have been utilized in several human–robot interaction applications with success 34 , 37 ; yet, investigations regarding its effectiveness in upper-limb prostheses has been lacking. Furthermore, it is not well understood how a haptic shared control approach affects the human operator’s cognitive load and their neural efficiency.…”

Modeling, analysis and control of robot–object nonsmooth underactuated Lagrangian systems: A tutorial overview and perspectives

“…10 (a) with periodic trajectories with impacts has been studied, e.g., in [216]. The nonprehensile control system studied in [217] is a 3D version of Fig. 10.…”

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