Tactile feedback system of high-frequency vibration signals for supporting delicate teleoperation of construction robots

Abstract

This study proposes a methodology to deliver contact information on construction robots to the remote operator by transmitting measured collision vibrations, which are often beyond the human perceivable range. We focus on the human capacity to discriminate the envelope of high-frequency vibrations as an essential cue to perceive contact materials and collision conditions. The proposed method preserves the envelope shapes with amplitudemodulated waves with a single carrier frequency in the human sensitive range. In the preliminary experiments, a miniature shovel digging experiment confirmed that the proposed method improves the discriminability of the contact materials and sliding velocities. A psychophysical experiment also showed that the participants could discriminate the envelope differences irrespective of the carrier frequency. The proposed method was applied to the tactile transmission system for a construction robot developed in the ImPACT program. A vibration sensor was attached on the robot arm, and the vibrotactile feedback was applied to the operator's wrist. Performance evaluations under a delicate teleoperated task (insertion of a bar into bricks) showed that the peak force was reduced by the proposed method significantly for two out of the three participants. The results show that our proposal could improve the maneuverability of teleoperation.

Extended phantom sensation: vibrotactile-based movement sensation in the area outside the inter-stimulus

“…A total of 32 trials were conducted for each method. The first two trials of each of the four stimuli were excluded from the data during the following analysis to reduce the variability of the trials to get used to it with reference to [6]. In total, 96 trials were conducted for each participant.…”

“…4a. The vibotactile stimulation was presented to the palm of the participant's hand using a voice coil actuator (Vp210, ACOUVE LABORATORY Inc.), which enabled the independent control of the amplitude and frequency of the vibrotactile signal [4,6]. A vibrator was then softly pressed to the palm with the help of flexible belts.…”

“…This study focuses on haptic information to improve the perception of the localization of moving objects. Mechanical vibrotactile stimulation, which is relatively small and light tactile displays and capable of an independent control of amplitude and frequency, is widely used [4][5][6]. One possible approach of presenting spatial information such as the perception of movement using mechanical vibrotactile stimuli involves placing of several vibrators on the body [7][8][9].…”

Human interface design for semi-autonomous control of leader-follower excavator based on variable admittance and stagnation/trajectory bifurcation of nonlinear dynamics

“…Ito et al proposed visual feedback of machine instability to the operator to avoid tipping over, and proposed the instability of the machine obtained from the attitude of the attachment and the excavation reaction force (Ito et al, 2021). Nagano et al transmitted the contact information of a construction robot to the operator by converting the measured collision vibration, which is often beyond the range of human perception, into an amplitude modulated wave with a single carrier frequency that is within the range of human perception (Nagano et al, 2020). Yusof et al proposed an auditory feedback to compensate the insufficient leader-follower force feedback information (Yusof et al, 2011).…”

Electromagnetic Vibration Tactile Feedback for Biological and Artificial Wave Signals

“…Compared with visual and auditory feedback, tactile feedback is displayed on the skin actively, which can avoid the interference of dark, noisy, vacuum, and other complex environments [7], and directly help people even with visual or hearing impairment to obtain complex information rapidly and comfortably [13,18,20]. It is of great significance in the fields of virtual medical surgery [15], dynamic braille devices [16], teleoperating robots [14] and so on. Among several kinds of tactile sense, vibration feedback has become the most common form of tactile feedback due to its obvious effects, simple generation, convenient deployment, and resistance to environmental interference.…”