Design of Telerobotic Drilling Control System with Haptic Feedback

Abstract

The paper deals with the design of control algorithms for virtual reality based telerobotic system with haptic feedback that allows for the remote control of the vertical drilling operation. The human operator controls the vertical penetration velocity using a haptic device while simultaneously receiving the haptic feedback from the locally implemented virtual environment. The virtual environment is rendered as a virtual spring with stiffness updated based on the estimate of the stiffness of the rock currently being cut. Based on the existing mathematical models of drill string/drive systems and rock cutting/penetration process, a robust servo controller is designed which guarantees the tracking of the reference vertical penetration velocity of the drill bit. A scheme for on-line estimation of the rock intrinsic specific energy is implemented. Simulations of the proposed control and parameter estimation algorithms have been conducted; consequently, the overall telerobotic drilling system with a human operator controlling the process using PHANTOM Omni haptic device is tested experimentally, where the drilling process is simulated in real time in virtual environment.