A Portable Intuitive Haptic Device on a Desk for User-Friendly Teleoperation of a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot

• Main Authors: Jae-Hyun Park, Min-Cheol Kim, Ralf Böhi, Sebastian Alexander Gommel, Eui-Sun Kim, Eunpyo Choi, Jong-Oh Park, Chang-Sei Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: cable-driven parallel robot; haptic device; haptic interaction; intuitive teleoperation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/9/3823

This paper presents a compact-sized haptic device based on a cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) mechanism for teleoperation. CDPRs characteristically have large workspaces and lightweight actuators. An intuitive and user-friendly remote control has not yet been achieved, owing to the unfamiliar multiple-cable configuration of CDPRs. To address this, we constructed a portable compact-sized CDPR with the same configuration as that of a larger fully constrained slave CDPR. The haptic device is controlled by an admittance control for stiffness adjustment and implemented in an embedded microprocessor-based controller for easy installation on an operator’s desk. To validate the performance of the device, we constructed an experimental teleoperation setup by using the prototyped portable CDPR as a master and larger-size CDPR as a slave robot. Experimental results showed that a human operator can successfully control the master device from a remote site and synchronized motion between the master and slave device was performed. Moreover, the user-friendly teleoperation could intuitively address situations at a remote site and provide an operator with realistic force during the motion of the slave CDPR.