Manipulation in real, virtual and remote environments

In this paper we describe a novel experimental procedure for the evaluation of a telemanipulator performance. A group of subjects performed the same set of tasks directly on a physical setup, on a virtual implementation capable of providing visual and force feedback through an haptic display, and remotely on the real setup using a telemanipulation system. Using this experimental procedure we were able to decouple the effects on the overall telemanipulator performance introduced by the single components of the system, master manipulator, display, slave manipulator rind bilateral controller.