Palm IIIc as advanced, low cost master part of teleoperation system

This paper is devoted to the experimental, low cost master part of teleoperation system. The slave device of the system-commercially available industrial robot IRp6 manipulates objects according to commands expressed by the proper human operator manipulations. The experimental set-up has been configured as a typical master-slave robotic system to try the concept of the simple master manipulator based on the very popular small hand computer "Personal Digital Assistant Palm IIIc" (PDA) supported by two standard encoders, CCD camera and simple electronics. The designed device enables to control the slave manipulator in very intuitive manner with visual feedback. Looking at the 256 colour TFT display and manoeuvring the PDA the operator is able to define the direction vector to the desired target position. Pressing buttons of PDA causes that distance from end effector of slave manipulator to target point increases or decreases in real time. In that way the operator in a few steps moves the end effector to requested point of the workspace. The described master manipulator has been tested successfully in the laboratory teleoperator system. Experiments confirmed usefulness of the unit for handling in real time various objects in the teleoperator workspace in very easy, natural and instinctive way.