Magister-P; a 6-URS parallel haptic device with open control architecture

Abstract

This paper presents a new haptic device based on a parallel structure that can be used as a master interface in a teleoperation or haptic control architecture. The basic idea of a haptic device is to serve force and/or position reflection to the operator; at the same time that is being used by the human operator to input the required commands. The original mechanical structure of the presented system implies important advantages over other existing devices. The mechanism is a modification of the 6-d.o.f. Gough platform where the linear actuators have been replaced by cable-driven pantographs. Avoiding the use of reduction gears by means of cable transmission allows a wide sensing bandwidth. Some experimental indices comparing the performance of the presented device are presented. The paper shows the geometrical model and the kinematic analysis used on the control algorithms of this interface. The hardware and software architectures used on the system, and the control schemes implemented on a multi-axis board, are detailed. This setup provides an open control architecture that allows the implementation and experimentation of several bilateral control schemes. The integration of the haptic device in a teleoperation simulator is shown. This simulator includes virtual robotic slaves and its dynamic interaction with the virtual environment. Finally, the results obtained in the virtual objects manipulation experiments are shown. A classical force-position bilateral control scheme was used for these experiments.