Design of versatile telerobotic systems using variable impedance actuation and control
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Telerobotic systems allow a human operator to remotely manipulate an environment. Using telerobotics, we can remain distant from dangerous or difficult-to-reach locations, or scale our motions and forces to levels beyond normal human abilities. We would like these systems to be capable of the widest possible range of actions, from delicate and gentle to strong and firm, making them more capable tools in the remote environment. Human versatility, in part, comes from our ability to adjust impedance to suit the task we are performing. Humans accomplish this by flexing and relaxing muscles, reorienting the skeletal structure, bracing on nearby objects, and through sensory feedback. In a telerobotic system, the impedance is a combination of the robot impedance, the controllers, position and force scaling, and the human impedance. This multiplicity of contributions limits the operator's ability to affect the overall system behavior directly, ultimately limiting the system's potential abilities. In this research, I have worked to extend the range of telerobotic performance capabilities by incorporating variable impedance actuators and control into the telerobotic system. Their inclusion gives the operator a more direct ability to control the telerobotic impedance and lessens the need for high-bandwidth, transparent controllers. This ultimately lets the operator perform a wider range of tasks. Additionally, the system performance becomes less sensitive to factors such as force feedback level and time delay. In this thesis, I investigate accomplishing impedance control for telemanipulation using variable stiffness actuators and software impedance control. I discuss the need for variable hardware actuators to control short-duration interactions, such as impacts. Based on insights from this work, I design several variable impedance telerobotic control architectures for improved manipulation performance. Results are presented from experiments in one-DOF and multi-DOF, as well as a user study, confirming improved versatile performance and reduced sensitivity to force feedback level. It is my hope that this work will help encourage a design perspective for telerobotic systems which emphasizes the system's versatility and usability over the goal of pure transparency.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Walker, Daniel Stephen |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Mechanical Engineering. |
| Primary advisor | Niemeyer, Gunter |
| Primary advisor | Salisbury, J. Kenneth |
| Thesis advisor | Niemeyer, Gunter |
| Thesis advisor | Salisbury, J. Kenneth |
| Thesis advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Daniel Stephen Walker. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Daniel Stephen Walker
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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