Five-fingered haptic interface robot: HIRO III

• Published in: World Haptics 2009 - Third Joint EuroHaptics conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems pp. 458 - 463
• Main Authors: Endo, T., Kawasaki, H., Mouri, T., Doi, Y., Yoshida, T., Ishigure, Y., Shimomura, H., Matsumura, M., Koketsu, K.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.2009
• Subjects: Circuits; Communication system control; Control systems; Design; Force control; Force sensors; Friction; Haptic interface; Haptic interfaces; Humans; Robot sensing systems; Virtual environment; Virtual reality
• ISBN: 9781424438587; 1424438586
• DOI: 10.1109/WHC.2009.4810812

This paper presents the design and characteristics of a five-fingered haptic interface robot: HIRO III. The aim of the paper is to provide a high-precision force representation at the five human fingertips. HIRO III consists of a 15-degree-of-freedom (DOF) haptic hand, a 6 DOF interface arm and a control system. The haptic interface, which consists of a robot arm and hand, can be used in a large workspace and can provide multipoint contact between the user and a virtual environment. However, the following problems peculiar to a multi-DOF robot have resulted: a backlash, a large amount of friction, many motors, and many sensors. In order to solve these problems, a new mechanism and a wire-saving control system have been designed and developed. Furthermore, experiments in both free space and constraint space have been carried out. In comparison with the previous HIRO, the force errors in free space and in constraint space have been reduced to 30% and 57%, respectively. These results show a high-precision force representation and the great potential of HIRO III.