Upper-body haptic system for snake robot teleoperation in pipelines
Upper-body haptic system for snake robot teleoperation in pipelines
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DOI：
10.1016/j.aei.2022.101532
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发表时间：
2022-01-18
影响因子：
8.8
通讯作者：
Du, Jing
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Zhu, Qi;Zhou, Tianyu;Du, Jing
蛇形机器人在人类工人不易接近或危险的密闭工作场所中显示出巨大的潜力，例如管道检查。然而，由于独特的运动机制（例如，螺旋运动）和工作场所的限制，包括低可见度和不可区分的特征。大多数蛇形机器人反馈系统仅基于实时摄像机视图。在蛇形机器人遥操作中，操作者很难对远程工作场所的空间位置有正确的理解，从而导致定向障碍和运动病等问题。本研究设计并评估一种创新的触觉辅助系统，用于管道检测中的蛇形机器人遥操作。开发了一种上半身触觉套装，在人类操作者的前后两侧都有40个振动器，以产生与蛇机器人的底部和上部相对应的触觉反馈，将蛇机器人的自我中心感传递给人类操作者。进行人类受试者实验（n = 31）以评估所开发的系统的功效。结果表明，建议的触觉辅助系统优于其他反馈系统的任务性能和主观工作量和晕动病的评价。它启发了新的控制和反馈设计的未来蛇机器人在工业操作。
Snake robots have shown a great potential for operations in confined workplaces that are less accessible or dangerous to human workers, such as the in-pipe inspection. However, the snake robot teleoperation remains a nontrivial task due to the unique locomotion mechanism (e.g., helical motion) and the constraints of the workplaces including the low visibility and indistinguishable features. Most snake robot feedback systems are based on the live camera view only. It is hard for the human operator to develop a correct spatial understanding of the remote workplace, leading to problems such as disorientation and motion sickness in snake robot teleoperation. This study designs and evaluates an innovative haptic assistant system for snake robot teleoperation in the in-pipe inspection. An upper-body haptic suit with 40 vibrators on both the front and back sides of the human operator was developed to generate haptic feedback corresponding to the bottom and up sides of the snake robot, transferring the egocentric sensation of the snake robot to the human operator. A human-subject experiment (n = 31) was performed to evaluate the efficacy of the developed system. The results indicate that the proposed haptic assistant system outperformed other feedback systems in terms of both task performance and subjective workload and motion sickness evaluations. It inspires new control and feedback designs for the future snake robot in industrial operations.