Fundamental investigation into shared control methodologies in robotic applications

本提案的目的是研究共享控制器的设计和实现及其在外科和生物科学、机器人系统远程控制和力反馈（触觉）设备设计的虚拟训练环境中的可能应用领域的基本问题。虚拟训练环境由基于力学原理的设计、图形渲染和触觉用户界面组成。训练方法之一是向用户提供虚拟力指导（虚拟指导）。这里的目标是探索约束计算力学中的方法，以有效地建模和稳定性分析这种虚拟引导（例如打结）或用户的约束运动。本文将为远程手术开发一种新的共享监控方案。在这里，期望的位置和力可以定义为移动的约束表面，然后可以使用例如顺序蒙特卡罗方案来估计。该方案已成功应用于目标在运动轨迹中可能被遮挡的情况下的视觉跟踪。在这个提议中，预期的前馈运动到从设备和返回反馈力到主触觉设备可以在一个移动的共享控制面中配置，尽管短的停电和/或不同的时间延迟，仍然可以实现稳健的性能。设计触觉装置的传统方法是以阻抗装置的形式将开放或封闭的运动链与高带宽驱动机构连接起来。一种新颖的设计理念是将驱动源与中间柔性机构相结合，该机构可以沿单个自由度创建一类低带宽触觉反馈。与仅使用高扭矩致动器相比，这种主动机构可以为设计用于各种应用（例如显微外科）的触觉装置提供一种替代和经济的方法。在机电配置中结合柔性膜的形状和大小以沿多个自由度创建触觉反馈的可能方法是主要的设计挑战。

The objective of this proposal is to investigate the fundamental issues involved in the design and implementation of shared controllers and their possible application areas of virtual training environments for surgical and biological sciences, and remote control of robotic systems and design of force feedback (haptic) devices. A virtual training environment consists of a design based on the principles of mechanics, graphics rendering and haptic user interface. One of the training approaches is to provide virtual force guidance (virtual mentoring) to the user. The objective here is to explore methods in constrained computational mechanics for effective modeling and stability analysis of such virtual guidance (e.g. to tie a knot) or constrained motions for the user. A novel shared monitoring/control scheme for the tele-manipulation over the internet will be developed for tele-surgery. Here, the expected position and force can be defined as moving constrained surfaces which can then be estimated using for example a sequential Monte Carlo scheme. Such scheme has been successfully applied to visual tracking of objects when the object can get occluded during its trajectory. In this proposal, the expected feed-forward motion to the slave device and the return feedback force to the master haptic device can be configured in a moving shared control surfaces where despite short black-outs and/or varying time delays, still a robust performance can be accomplished. A conventional approach for designing a haptic device is to interface an open or closed kinematic chain with a high bandwidth actuation mechanism in a form of an impedance device. A novel design concept is to combine an actuating source with an intermediate compliant mechanism which can create a class of low bandwidth haptic feedback along a single degree of freedom. In comparison to utilizing high torque actuators only, such active mechanism can offer an alternative and economical approach for designing a haptic device for various applications (e.g. micro-surgery). Possible approaches for combining the shape and size of the compliant membranes within the electromechanical configuration for creating haptic feedback along many degrees of freedom are the main design challenges.