Haptic interface for intuitive teleoperation of wheeled and tracked vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, a novel haptic interface is proposed for general teleoperation of wheeled and tracked vehicles. The new mechanism of the proposed haptic interface, shown in Figure 1, not only allows human operators to easily teleoperate various types of target vehicles, including car-like vehicles, mobile robots, and tracked vehicles, but also improves the operator’s perception of the target vehicle’s operating status and its environment by introducing a “cornering feel” to the field of vehicle teleoperation. In addition, the proposed interface enables human operators to give commands to (or drive) the target vehicle in a way that is traditionally carried out by direct control or driving. Experiments were completed to carefully evaluate and test the performance of the proposed interface. The results show that the developed haptic master device is sufficient and suitable for general wheeled and tracked-vehicle teleoperation.