Haptic feedback of kinematic conditioning for telerobotic applications

Kinematic conditioning of robot manipulators is the problem where small motions in Cartesian space cause excessive joint velocities. This problem is significant in teleoperation. Haptic feedback provides the bi-directional flow of information which allows the operator to control the telerobot interactively. Haptic feedback of kinematic conditioning is proposed as a new approach to achieve better performance in telerobotic control near kinematic singularities. Four different singularity force feedback methods are defined and studied. Experimental results with a force feedback master and simulated slave system show that teleoperation performance near singular configurations was affected and improved by using singularity force feedback.