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.