Mapping human to robot motion with functional anthropomorphism for teleoperation and telemanipulation with robot arm hand systems

In this paper teleoperation and telemanipulation with a robot arm (Mitsubishi PA-10) and a robot hand (DLR/HIT 2) is performed, using a human to robot motion mapping scheme that guarantees anthropomorphism. Two position trackers are used to capture position and orientation of human end-effector (wrist) and human elbow in 3D space and a dataglove to capture human hand kinematics. Then the inverse kinematics (IK) of the Mitsubishi PA-10 7-DoF robot arm are solved in an analytical manner, in order for the human's and the robot artifact's end-effectors to achieve same position and orientation in 3D space (functional constraint). Redundancy is handled in the solution space of the robot arm's IK, selecting the most anthropomorphic solution computed, with a criterion of 'Functional Anthropomorphism'. Human hand motion is transformed to robot hand motion using the joint-to-joint mapping methodology. Finally in order for the user to be able to detect contact and 'perceive' the forces exerted by the robot hand, a low-cost force feedback device, that provides a mixture of sensory information (visual and vibrotactile), was developed.