Robot team teleoperation for cooperative manipulation using wearable haptics

Robot teams require planning and adaptive capabilities in order to perform cooperative manipulation tasks in dynamic or unstructured environments. Since these capabilities are inherent to humans, it is suitable to consider human-robot team teleoperation for cooperative manipulation where a single human collaborates with the robot team. In this paper, we present a subtask-based control approach which enables a simultaneous execution of two subtasks by the robot team, interacting with the object: trajectory tracking and formation preservation. Control inputs for both subtasks are provided by the human operator. The commands are projected onto the spaces of subtasks using a command mapping strategy. Analogously, measured interacting forces are projected onto the space of feedback signals, provided to the human via wearable fingertip haptic devices through a feedback mapping strategy. Experimental results validate the proposed approach.