Vision assisted control for manipulation using virtual fixtures

The "steady hand" concept is a way of providing assistance for direct manipulation by applying constraints on the motion of a tool shared by a user and a robot. We explore in detail one family of constraints: virtual fixtures for use in path following tasks. Vision is used to sense the desired path, and then the robot encourages motion toward and along the path through a direction-based control law. This "soft" virtual fixture allows the user to move in other, non-preferred directions, maintaining the user\´s sense of autonomy and control. Experimental results show that user performance in assisted path following improves with virtual fixture augmentation, and differs with varying fixture compliance