i-Botics is an open innovation centre for Research and Development in Interaction Robotics. A particular project of i-Botics is focused at human operators remotely performing complex tasks through a robotic arm. This is important for situations in which a complex task has to be performed in an environment which is hostile for humans. The task requires human judgement and control, but the hostile environment does not allow a human to be present. Examples of such hostile environments could be nuclear sites or deep sea.
Performing the task will be done using be done using a KUKA LWR 4+ robotic arm. It is important that controlling the KUKA LWR 4+ is intuitive, previously the robotic arm has been operated using an Omega 7 haptic device. Using the Omega 7 to control a robotic arm and gripper has a few drawbacks. These drawbacks are:
- The workspace of the Omega 7 is very different from the workspace of the KUKA LWR 4+ robotic arm; this imposes a big limitation in available workspace.
- The Omega 7 offers accurate control over 7 degrees of freedom. This is enough to operate the robotic arm, but not enough to operate a potential end effector.
- The Omega 7 does not offer haptic feedback on the rotational degrees of freedom. Haptic feedback is essential for telepresence and allows the operator to intuitively operate the robotic arm.
A possible solution to overcome these drawbacks is to replace the Omega 7 with another robotic arm; Franka Emika’s Panda. Panda contains the same degrees of freedom and offers a similar workspace as the KUKA LWR 4+, which eliminates the workspace mismatch imposed by the Omega 7. Because all joints of the Panda can be actuated, it can offer full haptic force feedback on all joints. Additional hardware could be used to operate a potential end effector, but this is outside the scope of this assignment. The applicability of the Panda as haptic input device has been tested in simulation, but has not been fully tested in the real world.
In order to enable the operator to intuitively use the Panda as input device, a connection between the Panda and the operator has to be made. The workspace of a robotic arm is generally unsafe for a human being. Therefore research has been done to determine the conditions for safely operating the Panda. A safe mechatronical connection between the operator and the Panda needs to be designed and realised. This connection has to protect the operator from unsafe operation of the Panda. This will be done by disengaging the operator from the robotic arm when safety limits have been reached.
The main objective of this assignment is to design and realise this mechatronical connection between the operator and the Panda which allows the operator to intuitively operate the robotic arm. The secondary objective of this assignment is to realise a functional demo where the real world Panda is used to operate the real world Kuka with full haptic force feedback. This does not include an end effector.