Dynamic Locomotion Teleoperation of a Reduced Model of a Wheeled Humanoid Robot Using a Whole-Body Human-Machine Interface

Bilateral teleoperation provides humanoid robots with human planning intelligence while enabling the human to feel what the robot feels. It has the potential to make physically capable humanoid robots dynamically intelligent. However, dynamic bilateral locomotion teleoperation remains as a challenge due to the complex dynamics it involves. This work presents our initial step to tackle this challenge via the concept of wheeled humanoid robot locomotion teleoperation by body tilt. Specifically, we developed a whole-body human-machine interface (HMI) capable of applying force feedback to the human pilot. Then, we designed a force feedback law and two teleoperation mappings that map the human’s body tilt to the robot’s velocity or acceleration. We compared the two mappings and studied the force feedback’s effect via an experiment, where seven human subjects teleoperated a simulated robot with the HMI to perform dynamic target tracking tasks. The experimental results suggest that most subjects performed the tasks better with the velocity-based mapping, and that the force feedback improved their performances. Yet, the subjects exhibited two distinct teleoperation styles, which benefited from the force feedback differently. Moreover, the force feedback affected the subjects’ preferences on the teleoperation mappings.