Haptic-guided grasping to minimise torque effort during robotic telemanipulation

• Published in: Autonomous robots Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 405 - 423
• Main Authors: Rahal, Rahaf, Ghalamzan-E., Amir M., Abi-Farraj, Firas, Pacchierotti, Claudio, Robuffo Giordano, Paolo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2023; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Verlag
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Imaging; Computer Science; Control; Control methods; Effectiveness; Engineering; Grasping (robotics); Haptics; Hazardous materials; Industrial applications; Manipulators; Materials handling; Mechatronics; Pattern Recognition and Graphics; Remote handling; Robot arms; Robotics; Robotics and Automation; Torque; Vision; Teleoperation; Haptics; Shared control; Grasping; Post-grasp manipulation; Shared Control
• ISSN: 0929-5593; 1573-7527
• DOI: 10.1007/s10514-023-10096-7

Teleoperating robotic manipulators can be complicated and cognitively demanding for the human operator. Despite these difficulties, teleoperated robotic systems are still popular in several industrial applications, e.g., remote handling of hazardous material. In this context, we present a novel haptic shared control method for minimising the manipulator torque effort during remote manipulative actions in which an operator is assisted in selecting a suitable grasping pose for then displacing an object along a desired trajectory. Minimising torque is important because it reduces the system operating cost and extends the range of objects that can be manipulated. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in a series of representative real-world pick-and-place experiments as well as in a human subjects study. The reported results prove the effectiveness of our shared control vs. a standard teleoperation approach. We also find that haptic-only guidance performs better than visual-only guidance, although combining them together leads to the best overall results.