An interactive and intuitive control interface for a tele-operated robot (AVATAR) system

Robotic systems, which are controlled by artificial intelligent or tele-operation control interfaces, have been developed to be deployed instead of the human in extreme environments. However, insufficient artificial intelligence performance in unknown and unpredictable environments, and non-intuitive control interfaces with low immersive feedback have prevented wide spread of such robotic systems. In this paper, an intuitive and interactive control interface with inertial measurement units (IMUs), haptic gloves and a head mounted display (HMD) was developed to control a tele-operated robot in remote environments, which was abbreviated as AVATAR system. The tele-operated robot can be operated by a user's motions which are measured by the wearable interface. Through a kinematic analysis of the user and the tele-operated robot, desired robot joint angles are calculated to follow the user's motions in real time. Also, dual cameras on the robot head provide 3D visual information around the robot to the user. A grasping force of the robot hands, measured by motor current, is transmitted to the user as vibration feedback to fingertips of the haptic gloves. A long term evolution (LTE) was used as wireless communication between the user and the robot. The performance of the proposed AVATAR system has been verified by experiments.