It’s been more than a year since I made a post as I’ve been quite busy to be honest. Thankfully, I passed my PhD viva and I’m currently working as a researcher at King’s College London. Currently on my way to come up with a research plan, nevertheless, due to other various tasks I do in parallel, I managed to create some C++ code for bilateral teleoperation, i.e. teleoperation with force feedback using two Geomagic Touch devices by 3DSystems over a network. You can find the code on Github.
The bilateral teleoperation system uses a position – position configuration. This means that the angular values of the joints are only exchanged between the devices. The upside is that there is no need for force sensors and external tools, as required by the position-force configuration, to receive forces from the remote environment. This conveniently keeps the system nice and simple but also more functional as all the moving parts of the robotic arm will respond to any change imposed by the remote environment. The downside is that in terms of transparency (quality of telepresence) during contact it is just not as good as the alternative.
The touchp2p.cpp file once compiled on each PC where the Touch devices are connected, runs a PID controller that receives reference angular values of the joints of the other device. It is only required to set the correct IPs of the remote and local machine on each side of the teleoperation system. Continue reading “Bilateral teleoperation over network (source code and video)”
Kostas Antonakoglou 