Multi-Contact Bilateral Telemanipulation using Wearable Haptics

Bilateral telemanipulation refers to frameworks in which a human operator manipulates a master robotic interface and a slave robotic device emulates the behavior of the master, while haptic feedback is provided to the operator. For multi-contact bilateral teleoperation we intend master and slave systems that can establish multiple contact points with the user and with the environment. A paradigmatic example can be a multi-lingered robotic hand teleoperated by the human hand. Two of the most critical issues in this context are: (i) how to provide haptic feedback on multiple points of the human hand; (ii) how to solve the correspondence problem between the human hand and the robotic slave device. In this work, we propose finger-worn devices able to apply a three dimensional vector of force at a specific contact point to solve the multicontact feedback problem. For the correspondence problem, we propose an object-based mapping procedure. The approach is based on two virtual objects, defined both at the master and slave sides, to capture the human hand motion and to compute the related force feedback. The proposed approach has been tested in a telemanipulation framework where the master side was composed of a Leap Motion sensor used to track the hand plus three wearable haptic devices, while a robotic hand/arm system performed a manipulation task as slave.