Remote haptic feedback from a dynamic running machine

In this paper we present our efforts to design a system for feeding back useful haptic information from a highly dynamic running robot to a remote operator using a haptic device. Without adding additional sensors, the legs of the robot are used as feelers to give the operator the capability to both explore and manipulate the robot´s environment and to gather meaningful information about properties not captured by visual feedback like weight, movability and structure of an encountered object. We show the capabilities of the system in a user study with both trained and untrained operators.