Virtual tele-robotic operation and applications

Abstract

Tele-operations have been widely used in many applications. However, it is very difficult to maneuver a device in an environment with hidden objects. Virtual teleoperation can not only provide a pre-operation path planning tool, it also provides a low cost method for pre-operation rehearsal and training. In this paper, a haptic device based virtual tele-robotic system for a 5-axis articulated robot is presented. Instead of one master configuration to one slave configuration, the proposed method presents a transformation of one master configuration to many slave configurations based on inverse kinematics. Using the proposed method, two application backgrounds will be illustrated: one is the robotic assembly path planning and the other is the femur bone reduction pre-operative planning. In both of the applications, the operation is made easy because any collision can be felt by the user who manipulates a virtual robot through a virtual environment by a haptic device. © 2009 CAD Solutions, LLC.