Hand controller for bilateral teleoperation of robots

Teleoperation, one of the oldest areas of robotics, has experienced considerable growth in the last two decades. Main causes for this trend are the need for increased safety levels for human operators and lower production costs. In this work, a three d.o.f. local manipulator (two d.o.f. for force and one d.o.f. for torque) is developed. This hand controller, intended for robot or mobile teleoperation systems, has force reflection in two axes and torque reflection in the third axis. using a robotic hand developed at INAUT as a remote device, laboratory experiments on each axis (one at a time) have shown good results. An impedance controller at the remote system allows one to carry out interactive tasks with the environment such as polishing, insertion and grinding, where it is necessary to control and accommodate the interaction forces and torques in order to avoid hazards for both the manipulated objects and the remote robot.