This paper addresses a visual and force feedback based bilateral teleoperation of a mobile robot in an unstructured environment. Although, autonomous mobile robot systems are a challenging and attractive research area, when there are many static and dynamic obstacles in an operating environment of an autonomous mobile robot, the system may not preserve high degrees of reliability which is crucial especially for unknown, unstructured and hazardous environments. In this case, controlling the mobile robot with a highly intelligent and expert decisions made by the operator dynamically will be much more effective and reliable when it comes to achieve complex tasks. The suggested bilateral teleoperation system consists of human operator, master device like joystick, control system, and the mobile robot as a slave system.
The joystick with two degrees of freedom is manipulated by the operator. Microcontroller reads the joystick position and sends the operator’s command to the mobile robot. A computer is used to run computer vision algorithm to detect the positions of the mobile robot, obstacles and the workspace boundary with the use of frames acquired by the camera. The force feedback signal is sent to the master device to allow the operator feel the force and maneuver the joystick with respect to the force.
The main purpose of the article is to improve the perception of the operator about the remote environment by providing both visual and force feedback, thus enabling the operator to effectively control the mobile robot.
To illustrate the feasibility and the performance of the proposed structure, experimental results on a mobile robot with a force feedback joystick are presented.
Anahtar Kelimeler: teleoperation, force feedback, joystick, mobile robot
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