Feeling is Believing: Haptics and Telerobotics Technology

Abstract

Teleoperation and telerobotics are technologies that support physical action at a distance. This distance could span a few yards though a radioactivity-proof wall, or millions of miles through a vacuum to another planet. Although this book focuses on the relatively recent class of examples where the distance between operator and robot is spanned by the Internet, this chapter summarizes the broader research subject of teleoperation. Teleoperators and telerobots interpose distortion between the operator and the environment. This distortion is sometimes a necessary drawback of the system, or it may be intentionally introduced to produce a useful result like magnification. In either case, these distortions pose fundamental questions of telepistemology which the chapter will highlight rather than answer. The chapter will focus on the issues of time delay, control, and stability, with illustrations from the history of telerobotics and teleoperation. It is impossible to do justice to all of the important technologies and the innovative engineers who developed teleoperation in a short chapter, so I will present only a sample of the key ideas. Telerobotics remains an active research area pursued by engineers internationally.