A wearable device for controlling a robot gripper with fingertip contact, pressure, vibrotactile, and grip force feedback

Inspired by the potential of robotic teleoperation platforms, which extend the capabilities of both the human operator and the controlled robot, we have created a wearable haptic device that gives an operator bilateral control over the gripper of a remote robot. We believe this device is the first to provide kinesthetic grip force feedback along with independently controllable fingertip contact, pressure, and vibrotactile feedback, all of which are known to be of vital importance to humans when directly manipulating objects. The device is worn on the user's index finger and thumb and allows him or her to control the grip aperture of the robot using a pinching motion. Simultaneously, the operator receives kinesthetic grip force feedback from a geared DC motor and fingertip contact, pressure, and vibrotactile feedback from a pair of linear voice-coil actuators. This paper first describes the design of the device and then proposes a controller that closely links the human's hand to the sensory signals measured by kinesthetic and tactile sensors on the robot's gripper. We demonstrate initial feasibility of the device by having a user teleoperate a PR2 humanoid robot to repeatedly pick up and set down five diverse objects.