Wearable Haptics for a Marionette-inspired Teleoperation of Highly Redundant Robotic Systems

TL;DR

The paper tackles the problem of teleoperating highly redundant robots by moving beyond visual feedback to a wearable haptic interface within the Marionette-inspired TelePhysicalOperation framework. It introduces a lightweight sensorimotor interface that maps arm motions to virtual rope forces and provides cutaneous feedback via forearm indentation and finger rings, integrated with push-button controls. The approach is validated with CENTAURO in a loco-manipulation task, showing no significant increase in workload and a favorable subjective response to haptics, indicating improved embodiment and usability. The work demonstrates that wearable haptics can enhance operator awareness of robot actions and environment interactions without imposing substantial additional burden, and it outlines avenues for refining feedback mappings and broader validation.

Abstract

The teleoperation of complex, kinematically redundant robots with loco-manipulation capabilities represents a challenge for human operators, who have to learn how to operate the many degrees of freedom of the robot to accomplish a desired task. In this context, developing an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use human-robot interface is paramount. Recent works introduced a novel teleoperation concept, which relies on a virtual physical interaction interface between the human operator and the remote robot equivalent to a "Marionette" control, but whose feedback was limited to only visual feedback on the human side. In this paper, we propose extending the "Marionette" interface by adding a wearable haptic interface to cope with the limitations given by the previous works. Leveraging the additional haptic feedback modality, the human operator gains full sensorimotor control over the robot, and the awareness about the robot's response and interactions with the environment is greatly improved. We evaluated the proposed interface and the related teleoperation framework with naive users, assessing the teleoperation performance and the user experience with and without haptic feedback. The conducted experiments consisted in a loco-manipulation mission with the CENTAURO robot, a hybrid leg-wheel quadruped with a humanoid dual-arm upper body.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Concept: On the left, the blue rope, representing the TelePhysicalOperation connection, is not under tension. The robot stands still when the operator relaxes her arm. On the right, as soon as the user draws her arm closer to her body, the blue rope increases its tension, pulling the robot arm that follows her movement, while she can perceive the force feedback of pulling through our novel framework.
• Figure 2: Scheme of the proposed haptics-enabled TelePhysicalOperation framework.
• Figure 3: Sensorimotor interface: (a) forearm haptic interface, (b) tracking camera, (c) PCB and battery, (d) ring haptic interface, (e) servomotor, (f) vibromotor, (g) folding mechanism, (h) buttons, (i) structural plastic parts, (l) elastic band.
• Figure 4: Setup: (top) experimental area, (bottom) operator's monitor with RViz showing virtual forces on the robot model (left) and the robot camera view (right).
• Figure 5: Times of each trial for all the participants, where the conditions have been highlighted in different colors.