Dexterous telemanipulation with four fingered hand system

Abstract

The paper briefly describes the semi-anthropomorphic telemanipulation system and discusses the advanced capabilities that were demonstrated in the initial performance evaluation. The system's terminus devices are anthropomorphic: an exoskeleton sixteen degree of freedom (DOF) glove controller that senses human finger forces and backdrives slave motions to every joint of its four instrumented fingers; and a four fingered sixteen DOF anthropomorphic slave hand-wrist-forearm. The master glove is attached to a non-anthropomorphic six DOF universal force-reflecting hand controller (FRHC). The mechanical forearm is mounted to an industrial robot (PUMA 560), replacing its standard forearm. Active electromechanical compliance (AEC) systems for each finger and the wrist provide adjustable compliance, enabling human-like soft grasping. The system is controlled by a high performance distributed control system. Initial performance evaluations focused on tool handling capabilities and astronaut equivalent task executions. Results reveal that the combination of a fingered hand and active compliance enables unprecedented task executions. But it also became evident that complex manipulations require a dual arm robot.