Teleoperation Workcells
INTERACT Centaur
The mobile robotic platform called the Interact Centaur is a robotic platform for teleoperation in a practical context. The system can be operated outdoors in rough terrain to perform tasks and serves as a test-bed that allows experimentation in practical scenarios. Using two LWR arms, it has the dexterity to perform very delicate and precise manipulation tasks through remote control. The custom vehicle design was brought from concept to reality in little over a year in a collaboration with the TU Delft Robotics Institute.
The mobile robotic platform called the Interact Centaur is a robotic platform for teleoperation in a practical context. The system can be operated outdoors in rough terrain to perform tasks and serves as a test-bed that allows experimentation in practical scenarios. Using two LWR arms, it has the dexterity to perform very delicate and precise manipulation tasks through remote control. The custom vehicle design was brought from concept to reality in little over a year in a collaboration with the TU Delft Robotics Institute.
ACTOR Control Station
The ACTOR (AdvanCed TeleOpeRation) Control Station is a setup that combines several display technologies with advanced control joysticks in order to study and improve the teleoperation of robots. The control station enables an operator to perform detailed manipulation tasks by taking control of a robotic arm equipped with a gripper. Such tasks include soil sampling or sorting and assembling of components. To improve immersion for the operator an ergonomic workstation was chosen as the basic framework for the setup, which is equipped with a 3D monitor or alternatively a virtual reality headset. The video stream presented to the operator can be augmented with additional information e.g. system overlays or markers. In addition, a touch-screen monitor provides the operator with a GUI specific to the current task or scenario. The system is designed to support several different haptic input devices, such as the in-house developed Haptics-1 joystick or the commercially available Sigma.7.
LWR & Taskboard Workcell
One KUKA lightweight robot is integrated with an instrumented Task-board in this workcell. The KUKA is a seven DOF torque controlled robot that can be used with the KUKA RSI (Robot Sensor Interface) or the KUKA FRI (Fast Research Interface) software interfaces. The workcell is complemented with an exchangeable set of robotic end-effectors, such as a RobotiQ gripper, a Schunk SDH hand, a Barrett Hand or a Shadow Hand. The taskboard of this workcell includes many features to analyse various tasks, such as peg-in-the-hole, torque wrench activation, drawers that can be extracted, doors that can be opened (rotated), latches that can be locked, switches that can be toggled and a connector mating-/de-mating task configuration. This workcell can be remotely operated from our various exoskeleton controllers and other haptic devices for research of specific task aspects. Within the METERON Project, this workcell will be controlled remotely from space (ISS) by Astronauts with haptic feedback.
LWR Satellite Simulator
To investigate manipulation of large objects in 0g with the use of telerobotics, a dedicated set of control algorithms for the LWR robot was developed. This allows the robot to behave as if it were a one ton object floating in a 0g environment or as if it were an orbiting satellite. By attaching a task-board that represents a surface on the simulated satellite to the LWR and using an additional external robotic arm, teleoperation tasks in 0g can effectively by performed and control technologies can be researched. A background projection shows how the satellite at full scale would look.
