Development of a Soft Haptic Interface for Robot Teleoperation

Teleoperation is a field in robotics concerned with the real-time control of remotely acting robots. Such systems may be mobile or fixed-base, aerial or marine, and sometimes incorporate semi-autonomous functionality to take over both mundane and highly complex tasks from the operator. Teleoperated robots offer users the maximum possible degree of control and oversight over pre-programmed and fully-autonomous robots, but their overall effectiveness is limited by the attentiveness and capability of the operator. This negates one of the most significant benefits of modern robotics - the elimination of human error.

This project aims to generate and evaluate a series of haptic feedback devices based on a novel particle jamming based technology to deliver task and state information that would not be possible with visual and auditory feedback alone. For example, hazards such as loose terrain may not be visually detectable, and with human perception of 720 degree video streams still an active area of research, blind spots are inevitable in real world systems. These will then be evaluated through user studies in a telerobotics scenario designed to incorporate environmental hazards.