Intuitive Bilateral Teleoperation of a Cable-driven Parallel Robot Controlled by a Cable-driven Parallel Robot

Abstract

Intuitive remote multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) robot control has distinct advantages in field robotics applications, especially for a cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) capable of operating in a wide workspace with a heavy payload. This study proposes a novel intuitive teleoperation method for a CDPR, in which a remote CDPR is teleoperated by a local CDPR driven by a human. The proposed system comprises a master CDPR in the operating room, a slave CDPR in the workplace, wireless communication between the master and slave CDPRs, and an admittance control to realize the haptic force to the master CDPR. The master CDPR transmits the Cartesian posture command, based on an operator???s manipulation, to the slave CDPR, and the slave CDPR???s wrench force obtained through the cable tension measurement is fed back to the master CDPR. For validation, two CDPRs in different locations (approximately 7.46 km apart) are utilized; a mini-size CDPR is used as the master device and a grand-size CDPR is used as the slave robot. The experimental results demonstrate that the operator can fully control the slave robot???s six DOF motions with spatial force feeling in hand, and satisfactory synchronized movements of the two CDPRs at a distance could be performed. Also, a preliminary experimental result of the proposed wrench feedback method is discussed. The proposed method has practical benefits in field robotics applications in unmanned and hazardous workspaces, such as nuclear power plants and space, which require long-distance remote manipulation at different locations.