Mapping human to robot motion with functional anthropomorphism for teleoperation and telemanipulation with robot arm hand systems

In this paper teleoperation and telemanipulation with a robot arm (Mitsubishi PA-10) and a robot hand (DLR/HIT 2) is performed, using a human to robot motion mapping scheme that guarantees anthropomorphism. Two position trackers are used to capture position and orientation of human end-effector (wrist) and human elbow in 3D space and a dataglove to capture human hand kinematics. Then the inverse kinematics (IK) of the Mitsubishi PA-10 7-DoF robot arm are solved in an analytical manner, in order for the human´s and the robot artifact´s end-effectors to achieve same position and orientation in 3D space (functional constraint). Redundancy is handled in the solution space of the robot arm´s IK, selecting the most anthropomorphic solution computed, with a criterion of “Functional Anthropomorphism”. Human hand motion is transformed to robot hand motion using the joint-to-joint mapping methodology. Finally in order for the user to be able to detect contact and “perceive” the forces exerted by the robot hand, a low-cost force feedback device, that provides a mixture of sensory information (visual and vibrotactile), was developed.