Object-based Bilateral Telemanipulation Between Dissimilar Kinematic Structures

This paper presents a bilateral telemanipulation framework where the master and slave sub-systems have different kinematic structures. A virtual object is defined on the master and slave sides and used to capture the human hand motion and to compute the related force feedback. The force feedback is determined imposing that the same wrench acts on the master and slave virtual objects. An abstraction from the sub-system structures is obtained focusing on the effects produced on the manipulated object. The proposed approach has been tested with an experimental setup consisting of two haptic interfaces able to capture index and thumb motions on the master side and a DLR-HIT Hand II as slave sub-system.