This paper proposes the implementation of the teleoperation system for a mobile robot using the BeagleBlack board. The Omnidirectional Mobile Robot represents the master robot, including the copy robot stationed at two distant locations. Both copy robots replicate the pose of the master robots controlled with a human hand. The teleoperation system uses position feedback control and real-time monitoring system powered by the virtual instrumentation and control program, namely Lab View. The communication system is established by the Local Area Network. Three controllers PI, PD, and PID are employed in the teleoperation system to evaluate stability and effectiveness. All three experimental results verify that the teleoperation system designed can be operated and achieved on the Beagle Black Board as well.

This brief proposes a new stabilizing communication law to allow the wave transformation-based teleoperation architecture to accommodate direct environmental contact force feedback, potentially increasing the human operator's experience of telepresence. Simulation results are provided.

Visual and auditory communication over the Internet has enabled communication unlike any humankind has experienced before. However, Internet communication based on haptic interfaces is not yet widespread. This study seeks to allow thousands of people to share the sense of force and enjoy Internet games such as tug-of-war by providing a stabilizing system able to overcome Internet communication delay. First, we derive non-positivity for the multi-coupling physical model. Second, we prove that a closed loop using a phase control filter is stable despite constant communication delay using Integral Quadratic Constraints (IQC). Finally, we validate our proposed system through a series of experiments with 8 clients.

This paper describes a robot-mediated information guide system that introduces audio-visual information to users interactively. The developed information guide system is composed of a touch panel interface, a mediator robot and backyard control systems. The touch panel interface functions to display audio-visual contents, while the mediator robot attracts people to this guide system and help user's operation. Many robots in literature are equipped with interactive audio-visual interface, however in most cases the audio-visual interface is a front end of the robot for presentation. We propose a new communication framework in which the robot behaves as a mediator to make a bridge between users and audio-visual interface by generating speeches and gestures. We hypothesize that entrainment of the mediator robot with users and contents could promote user's immersion in the contents. We conducted experiments with the proposed information guide system to examine the effect of robot mediation in a realistic interaction scenario that actually guides city sites for visitors. The developed information guide system was demonstrated in the science museum of the city in May 2014 and will be used for public events in future.

This paper presents a tele-control system comprised of a robot hand/arm and an operator. In our system, the angle of the finger of the robot hand is controlled according to the angle of the operator's finger, and the position of the robot arm is controlled according to the position of the operator's arm. Simultaneously, the operator feels the environmental force as detected by the touch sensor attached to the robot hand, resulting in so-called bilateral master/slave control. To date, there have been a few studies of bilateral master/slave systems that use a multi-fingered humanoid robot hand in communication networks with delay caused by physical distance. The purpose of our study was to achieve tele-operation with bilateral master/slave control between the operator's hand/arm and the multi-fingered humanoid robot hand/arm using the Internet with delay caused by distance. For our experiment, the operator was in the USA, and the multi-fingered humanoid robot hand/arm and object were in Japan. Using our system, the operator could successfully grasp and move an object while he felt the reaction force from the object. This technology can applicable to tele-operation such as feeling the hardness and weight of the stone which exist in the moon, on the ground etc.

This paper presents a tele-control system constructed by a robot hand/arm and operator. The angle of the robot hand is controlled by the angle of the operator's finger, and the operator feels the environmental force, as detected by the touch sensor of the robot hand, constituting so-called bilateral master/slave control. The position of the robot arm is controlled by the position of the operator's arm.

In this paper, a power-assisted attitude control system consisting of parallel wires is proposed. This system controls the attitude of an object, thus reducing the burden on the operator and allowing direct manipulation. In our previous research, a power-assisted control system for an overhead crane was proposed. Operators could move a heavy object freely in horizontal and vertical directions and adjust one-degree-of freedom (1-DOF) attitude by inputting a slight force grasping the object directly, that meant the operator did not feel any sensors. Our newly proposed equipment consists of an overhead crane and two linear cylinders. A power-assisted 2-DOF attitude control algorithm that controls the length of the cylinders and hoisting motion of the crane synchronously is proposed, and the effectiveness of the system is demonstrated in some experiments.

This paper gives an advanced driving control system that considers sway suppression of a passenger's posture in an electrical wheelchair. We proposed a passenger model that considers the passenger's physical frame and seating condition. The passenger's seating condition is classified as upright, standard, or round-shouldered posture. The sway of a passenger with round-shouldered posture is smaller than that of a passenger with upright posture, and they can be represented by the proposed model. To suppress the sway of a wheelchair passenger's posture, the wheelchair driving pattern is optimized using the proposed passenger's posture model. The comfort of the passenger with respect to the proposed wheelchair driving is evaluated through experiments.

In order to make haptic feedback in teleoperation rehabilitation robot system or to assist the object's movement, recognition the intended movement of an object is required. In this paper, we establish the relation between the electromyography (EMG) signal of some specified hu.man arm's muscles and the moment of corresponding arm's joints. The model and the parameter calibration process are simple to put in to practice. Experiments showed that by using the proposed EMG-moment model, it is possible to predict the moment of the shoulder and elbow joints from the processed EMG signals of specified muscles.

This paper presents a tele-control system constructed from a multi-fingered robot hand and operator. The angle of the robot hand is controlled by the angle of the operator’s finger, and the operator feels the environmental force, as detected by the robot hand, constituting so-called bilateral master/slave control.

This paper proposes an intelligent massage control system by using multi-fingered robot hand with hybrid impedance control, which is able to create the movement and the force of robot such as the human's massage. Therefore, the various massage points, such as the change of the stiffness of human skin muscle, can be controlled by using impedance control method. The hybrid impedance control is comprised of the two methods of the position-based and the force-based impedance control were applied. The position-based impedance control is used to control the lateral position of massage on the human skin muscle. On the other hand, the force-based impedance control is used to control the force of the vertical direction on human skin muscle. This paper also gives the identification of human skin muscle through robot perception of impedance to decide the parameter of impedance controller. The control strategy using impedance control to implement an adaptive control system is presented, when human condition is changed with soft and hard skin muscle. Effectiveness of massage control system by using multi- fingered robot hand with hybrid impedance control is demonstrator through actual massage experiments of pushing and rubbing motion.

This paper proposes an intelligent massage control system by using multi-fingered robot hand with hybrid impedance and force control, which is able to create the movement and force of robot to behave as similar as the human’s massage. Therefore, the various massage points, such as the changing of hardness and softness of human skin muscle condition, can be appropriately controlled by using hybrid impedance and force control method. The impedance control is used to control the lateral position of massage on the human skin muscle. The perpendicular direction one, while force control is carried out for the vertical direction on human skin muscle. This paper also gives a modeling of human skin muscle through robot perception of impedance to decide the parameter of impedance controller. The control strategy using a hybrid impedance and force control to implement an adaptive control system is presented, when human condition is changed with soft and hard skin muscle. For the robot fingertip force, PI servo compensation is used together with impedance control. Based on using both impedance and PI servo compensation, the effectiveness of the massage position and force control is shown through actual massage motion experiments.

In this paper, a vertical power-assisted crane system is proposed. The purpose of this research is to develop a crane system which reduces the operator's burden by power-assisted functions and facilitates the intuitive operation of a heavy object by direct manual manipulation. First, the structure of this system is described, and an analytical optimal controller is designed to stabilize the system under the model uncertainty and to optimize response. Second, "the limit-cycle problem" when an object contacts the ground is pointed out, and the condition for the attenuation of the limit-cycle is discussed. Finally, the usefulness of the proposed controller is demonstrated by an actual power-assisted crane system

In this paper, riding comfort of an omnidirectional wheelchair (OMW) driven by joystick is studied for the case when OMW moves in X direction, Y direction, or in a slanting direction. In order to achieve the comfort driving specific spectrum elements such as natural frequency of OMW and discomfort frequency of human organs are suppressed. In order to evaluate the comfort, a human model which considers human upper body composed of two parts: torso and head, has been developed and used in order to test the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Experimental results of velocity control are shown.

An omni-directional wheelchair is highly maneuverable in narrow or crowded areas such as residences, offices and hospitals. However, with the increase in the degrees of freedom accompanying omni-directional wheelchairs, it has become more important than in the past to develop a smooth and vibrationless motion control system. This paper presents a novel motion control method for an omni-directional wheelchair considering the suppression of vibration of both the wheelchair and the user. In the proposed control system, the vibration of the wheelchair is suppressed by notching the frequency characteristics at the natural frequency of both the wheelchair and human's organs. The designed controller satisfies various control specifications such as settling time and stability by using feedback from only the wheelchair's position data. The effectiveness of the proposed system is evaluated by the output signal of a sensor attached to the wheelchair and by a descriptive inspection of several users.

The present paper gives a haptic feedback control of a holonomic omni-directional mobile wheelchair (OMW) with a haptic joystick for the operation of disable people or elderly people considering not only the navigation task but also user's comfort and safety. In the present research a haptic joystick was designed and applied with being maneuverable for users and free of joystick's vibrations. If an obstacle is detected in the direction of movement, the impedance of the joystick in this direction is changed. Namely, the closer the obstacle is the bigger the impedance value becomes. By this function, users spontaneously understand that they are in risk of obstacle collision and then users can change the direction of movement, by their decision, in order to avoid it. Furthermore, for the command input by human joystick operation, velocity control of OMW is executed by means of frequency shaped control to achieve the comfort drive for users. The proposed approach is thought to be reasonable as a man-machine existing control system.

In this paper, a novel power assist system for the attendant of an omni-directional transport wheelchair is proposed. The input force of the attendant is measured using a force sensor attached to the handle of the wheelchair. The desired motion of the wheelchair is estimated from the output signal of the force sensor using fuzzy reasoning. Then, it is transmitted to four motors of the wheelchair to make it move toward the desired direction. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined by simulations and experiments.

This paper presents a massage motion control system comprised of position control and force control in a multi-fingered robot hand. By making use of an algorithm which converted the desired fingertip trajectory into the desired angle of links in each finger by means of inverse kinematics, the finger position control from the initial position of the multi-fingered robot hand to a target position of the objects for massage was achieved. Its controller was used until the robot hand contacted the objects for massage. After contact was made, the fingertip position control was switched to a force control position needed to apply pressure for the massage. The fingertip forces exerted by an expert human therapist was measured using sheet distribution pressure sensors, and the data obtained was recorded in a computer. After the measurements were taken, the human expert's fingertip force was reproduced by the robot hand. The fingertip force of the robot hand was controlled using feedback obtained with a 6-axis force sensor. To make the force of each fingertip of the four-fingered robot hand track to the fingertip force exerted by the expert human massage therapist, PI servo compensation and a Jacobian matrix were really applied for the human's shoulder. Through simulation and experiments, the usefulness of the proposed control systems was demonstrated.