A Wearable Upper Limb Exoskeleton for Intuitive Teleoperation of Anthropomorphic Manipulators

Abstract

Teleoperation technology combines the strength and accuracy of robots with the perception and cognition abilities of human experts, allowing the robots to work as an avatar of the operator in dangerous environments. The motion compatibility and intuitiveness of the human–machine interface directly affect the quality of teleoperation. However, many motion capture methods require special working environments or need bulky mechanisms. In this research, we proposed a wearable, lightweight, and passive upper limb exoskeleton, which takes intuitiveness and human-machine compatibility as a major concern. The upper limb pose estimation and teleoperation mapping control methods based on the exoskeleton are also discussed. Experimental results showed that by the help of the upper limb exoskeleton, people can achieve most areas of the normal range of motion. The proposed mapping control methods were verified on a 14-DOF anthropomorphic manipulator and showed good performance in teleoperation tasks.