Experimental evaluation of operability improvement in bilateral control by using visual information

Abstract

This paper proposes the improvement method of operability in a bilateral control by using visual information. The bilateral control system consists of a master system which is manipulated by the operator and a slave system which contacts remove environment. Considering the actual use of the bilateral control, the operator manipulates the master system while watching the visual information from the slave side. In this situation, there is the time delay of visual information. This time delay has the bad influence of the operability. In order to improve the operability, the synchronization method of visual and tactile information is described. The virtual model, which consists of the virtual slave model and the virtual object model, is proposed to compensate this time delay. This virtual model is overlaid on the visual image from the slave side. As a result, the operator grasps the motion of the slave system and the object without time delay. The validity of the proposed system was confirmed from the experimental results.