Development of a master station for the remote control of rescue robots

As the robot are not intelligent enough to cope with unexpected events, they can not accomplish their mission autonomously without human operation. To overcome this kind of limitation, teleoperation has been studied for a long time. A master-slave is one of the teleoperation systems considered. It consists of a master robot operated by a human, a slave robot working in a real field, and communication link connecting the two robots. To control the slave robot remotely, the master robot has to obtain the information of the position/force of the slave robot as well as the image and distance measured by an ultrasonic or laser sensor. Recently, tactile information is used to control the robot remotely. This paper describes the establishment of a master-slave control system based on a haptic interface for the emergency response of a nuclear power plant.