Master-Slave Control for a Tele-Operation System of Construction Robot

Abstract

This study deals with a master-slave system of a tele-operated construction robot. The system consists of an excavator as the construction robot and two joysticks for operating the robot from a remote place. A fork glove is attached to the front end of the excavator as a hand for grasping task objects. The slave and the master in this system correspond to, respectively, the fork glove and the joysticks controlled by an operator. In such a remote control system, the operator needs to feel a realistic sense of task force, which is brought about from a feedback force from the fork glove. In order to attain an effective feedback of the task force, in the previous report of this study, a control method called a variable-gain symmetric-position was proposed. After that, however, a weak point was found in this method. Namely, the operator was not able to feel a realistic sense of the task force when he was grasping a soft object at a comparatively slow velocity. In the present report, therefore, for overcoming this problem, an improved method of control is proposed.