Telemanipulation with a humanoid robot hand/arm between USA and Japan

This paper presents a tele-control system comprised of a robot hand/arm and an operator. In our system, the angle of the finger of the robot hand is controlled according to the angle of the operator’s finger, and the position of the robot arm is controlled according to the position of the operator’s arm. Simultaneously, the operator feels the environmental force as detected by the touch sensor attached to the robot hand, resulting in so-called bilateral master/slave control. To date, there have been a few studies of bilateral master/slave systems that use a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand in communication networks with delay caused by physical distance. The purpose of our study was to achieve tele-operation with bilateral master/slave control between the operator’s hand/arm and the multi-fingered humanoid robot hand/arm using the Internet with delay caused by distance. For our experiment, the operator was in the USA, and the multi-fingered humanoid robot hand/arm and object were in Japan. Using our system, the operator could successfully grasp and move an object while he felt the reaction force from the object. This technology can applicable to tele-operation such as feeling the hardness and weight of the stone which exist in the moon, on the ground etc.

This paper presents a tele-control system constructed from a multi-fingered robot hand and operator. The angle of the robot hand is controlled by the angle of the operator’s finger, and the operator feels the environmental force, as detected by the robot hand, constituting so-called bilateral master/slave control.

This paper presents a tele-control system constructed by a robot hand/arm and operator. The angle of the robot hand is controlled by the angle of the operator's finger, and the operator feels the environmental force, as detected by the touch sensor of the robot hand, constituting so-called bilateral master/slave control. The position of the robot arm is controlled by the position of the operator's arm.So far, there has been little research using a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand in a network environment where communication delay exists. The purpose of our study is to achieve tele-operation between an operator's hand/arm and a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand/arm with delayed time. Therefore, this study constructs a system that can grasp and manipulate objects stably, despite the communication delay.In the experiments, the operator operates humanoid robot hand/arm of Toyohashi University of Technology from USA. The operator grasp and moves an object in Japan by operating the humanoid robot hand/arm. The staff in Japan gives the operation instruction to the operator in USA during experiment. The operator operates robot according to the voice. The experimental results show that this system can grasp and manipulate objects stably, despite the communication delay. In addition, the operator grasped the object using a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand/arm by master/slave control feeling fingertip force by tele-operation between USA and Japan.

This paper presents a tele-control system constructed from a multi-fingered robot hand and operator. The angle of the robot hand is controlled by the angle of the operator's finger, and the operator feels the environmental force, as detected by the robot hand, constituting so-called bilateral master/slave control. In the experiments, the operator grasped the object in spite of Round Trip Time (RTT) as Osec, 0.56sec, using a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand by master/slave control feeling fingertip force. However, with increases in the RTT, the operation became more difficult. We also analyzed the stability of the master site and the slave site by frequency characteristics. The results showed that this system was unstable. However, grasping by tele-control with a communication delay was demonstrated.

The multi-fingered robot hand has much attention in various fields. Many robot hands have been proposed so far. A teleoperation system for the hand/arm robot allows intuitive manipulation of the hand/arm robot. This paper deals with a motion capture system for controlling the hand/arm robot remotely. Here, we use vision and inertial sensors simultaneously in order to detect the position and the posture of an operator's arm and hand.

We have presented the newly developed anthropomorphic robot hand named the KH Hand type S and its master slave system using the bilateral controller. The use of an elastic body has improved the robot hand in terms of weight, the backlash of the transmission, and friction between the gears. We have demonstrated the expression of the Japanese finger alphabet. We have also shown an experiment of a peg-in-hole task controlled by the bilateral controller. These results indicate that the KH Hand type S has a higher potential than previous robot hands in performing not only hand shape display tasks but also in grasping and manipulating objects in a manner like that of the human hand. In our future work, we are planning to study dexterous grasping and manipulation by the robot.

The multi-fingered robot hand has much attention in various fields. Many robot hands have been proposed so far and we have developed a hand/arm robot with universal robot hand II. The human type robot like the hand/arm robot can be operated by imitating the human motion. Various types of the human motion capture have been developed. However, it is difficult to capture the twist motion by the conventional motion capture. This paper deals with a motion capture system with inertial measurement units (IMUs). The IMUs are used in order to estimate the joint angles of the operator's hand and arm.

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Humanoid robotic hand is one of most impressive research focus in robotics. There are two important requirements in robotic hands: on the one hand, a hand has a good humanoid appearance and sizes and can grasp almost all of common objects, on the other hand, the same hand is very simple in structure, very easy in control and very low in cost. Most of present dexterous robotic hands could not balance above two aspects. In searching for simple architecture and effective grasp at once, a novel under-actuated robotic hand is designed and manufactured and could achieve the above requirements perfectly, which is called Linkage Indirectly Self-Adaptive Under-actuated Hand, LISA Hand. The key of the LISA Hand is special and simple structure of its fingers. The indirectly under-actuated LISA finger can utilize the inverse forces from objects grasped to realize action of the next joint without any motor. Each of LISA fingers is composed of multiple-class block-linkage-slot transmission mechanisms, multiple springs and only one motor with a reducer. The LISA Hand has 5 fingers, 14 joint DOFs and only 5 motors. All fingers in the LISA Hand are similar. The thumb has two joints, and each of the other four fingers has three joints. Self-adaptation for good grasping performance is designed as the main function of the LISA finger. The grasping principle, process and force analysis of LISA Hands are given. Force analysis shows that the LISA Hand is valid and could be regarded as an end-effecter of humanoid robots.

Various humanoid robots and multi-fingered robot hands are used in research and development. As these robot hands grasp and manipulate an object, the control phase is divided into an “approach phase” and a “manipulation phase.” In the approach phase, a position control method is necessary to control the posture of the robot hand. In the manipulation phase, a force control method is necessary to control the fingertip force of the robot hand. However, it is difficult to control both the force and position of these hands at the same time. In this paper, we propose a grasping force control method based on position control for manipulation. In this proposed method, the finger position is controlled in the direction of the force vector. With this control method, any external force is cancelled and the initial force is kept constant, or the setting force is applied to an object.

This paper proposed a design idea of a novel under-actuated finger mechanism, and designed the finger mechanism. The finger has no actuator in itself, is only driven by the other finger joints and object grasped. The finger is similar to a human finger and can be easily arranged in series to realize a finger with super under-actuation and high integration. It can be mounted in humanoid robot hand to make the hand obtain more DOFs with less actuators, and good grasping function of shape adaptation, decrease the requirement of control system. This paper analyzed the relationship between the grasping force of the finger and its design parameters, proposed the design principle of structure optimization of the finger. Based on the finger, a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand: TH-2 Hand has been designed. TH-2 Hand has many excellent features: high personification, super under-actuation and be very compact, easy to real-time control, small volume, light in weight, strong grasping function, etc.

Thermal modeling of a robotic arm equipped with a multifingered robotic hand (end effector) is considered in this paper. The robotic arm is assumed to move its multifingered hand into and out of a high-temperature medium while gripping an object for a pick and place assembly and heat treatment process. If the rate of heat transfer from robotic hand to robotic arm is small, a lumped-capacitance model can be used to find the transient temperature response of the robotic hand. Different models to approximate the effect of thermal coupling between the robotic hand and robotic arm are discussed. To analyze the effect of heat transfer from robotic hand to robotic arm, transient temperature distribution in one dimension of a rod periodically moving into a hot medium is found numerically. The rod is divided into two parts; the first part simulates the robotic hand and second part simulates the robotic arm. Using different thermal parameters and environmental conditions, transient and quasi-steady state t...

This research focuses on robot hand control of telexistence robot to realize precise hand manipulation. A humanoid surrogate robot which possesses large number of DoF and works under master-slave controlling can reproduce operator's hand and finger movements, and therefore it will realize fine and delicate teleoperation as if the work were performed by operator's own hand. However, even though the robot hand moves with dexterity, the body size difference between operator and robot has great influence to the consistency of position and configuration of body-parts such as fingertips between them, and may lead the difficultly of manual teleoperation. The problem is how to manage various operator's body size and maintain the correspondence of the operator to the robot. To overcome this issue, we propose a novel method of robot hand control which is based on congruence of two vectors bellows: (1) thumb tip to opposite fingers and (2) point-of-view to thumb/fingers. Considering that the spatial relationship between thumb and opposite fingers are important to perform precise hand manipulation, to keep the vector makes replication of operator's handshape on the robot hand. Also, because the operator of telexistence robot sees robot's body-parts including hand via eye-camera as his/her surrogate body, to match the vector realizes consistent experiences about hand position and aids intuitive operation. The proposed method was implemented to the control system of newly developed telexistence robot “TELESAR6” and the performance of hand manipulation using the method was evaluated.

Since the first prototype robot “WABOT-1” was created in 1973, how to build humanoid robots has been becoming an active research topic in the robotics area. Hands are one of the most articulated parts of humanoid robots. Natural grasping is a target that most humanoid robotic hands are pursuing. While a lot of research was done in the last 30 years for the simulation of human grasping, existing solutions for robotic hands to simulate the natural grasping of a human hand are still not satisfactory. For instance, it is observed that robotic hands are apparently different from human hands when moving or grasping due to the lack of kinematic ability and suitable motion plan. This thesis describes our research of designing robotic hands for social robots and enabling the robotic hands to function as human hands. The research is divided into four fundamental tasks: (i) designing visually pleasant customized robotic hands, (ii) equipping robotic hands with a human-like actuation mechanism, (iii) developing path planning method to simulate human hand grasping, and (iv) mimicking the complex in-hand manipulations.

The multi-fingered robot hand has much attention in various fields. Many Robot hands have been proposed so far. A teleoperation system for the hand/arm robot allows intuitive manipulation of the hand/arm robot. Therefore, this paper deals with a motion capture system for controlling the hand/arm robot remotely. Here, we use inertial measurement units in order to detect the joint angle of an operator's hand and arm.