Humanlike Inverse Kinematics for Improved Spatial Awareness in Construction Robot Teleoperation: Design and Experiment
Humanlike Inverse Kinematics for Improved Spatial Awareness in Construction Robot Teleoperation: Design and Experiment
- 1-13p.
The teleoperation of robotic arms is expected to play a key role in dangerous or inaccessible construction workplaces. Most robot arms rely on mechanical designs that are completely different from human arms. It could lead to a risk that certain joints move with undesired poses and cause collisions because of the mismatch between robot mechanical design and human operators’ egocentric perception of their own arms. This paper proposes an innovative robotic control method that mimics the human shoulder-arm structure, enabling human operators to teleoperate with unfamiliar robotic arms intuitively. A two-tracker system is used to map human arm motions into a revised robotic inverse kinematics (IK) algorithm called humanlike IK. One tracker controls the end effector of the robot, and the other tracker drives the middle joint of the robot, analogous to how a human moves the arm. A seven-degree-of-freedom robotic arm was repurposed based on the revised IK. A human-subject experiment (n=26) was performed to test the effectiveness of the proposed humanlike IK method in a pipe maintenance task. Results confirmed the performance and functional benefits of the proposed method. It can inspire the design of a new robot teleoperation method for dexterous tasks in construction.
0733-9364
The teleoperation of robotic arms is expected to play a key role in dangerous or inaccessible construction workplaces. Most robot arms rely on mechanical designs that are completely different from human arms. It could lead to a risk that certain joints move with undesired poses and cause collisions because of the mismatch between robot mechanical design and human operators’ egocentric perception of their own arms. This paper proposes an innovative robotic control method that mimics the human shoulder-arm structure, enabling human operators to teleoperate with unfamiliar robotic arms intuitively. A two-tracker system is used to map human arm motions into a revised robotic inverse kinematics (IK) algorithm called humanlike IK. One tracker controls the end effector of the robot, and the other tracker drives the middle joint of the robot, analogous to how a human moves the arm. A seven-degree-of-freedom robotic arm was repurposed based on the revised IK. A human-subject experiment (n=26) was performed to test the effectiveness of the proposed humanlike IK method in a pipe maintenance task. Results confirmed the performance and functional benefits of the proposed method. It can inspire the design of a new robot teleoperation method for dexterous tasks in construction.
0733-9364