Development and human performance evaluation of a ground vehicle robotic force-feedback tele-operation system

ABSTRACT DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A GROUND VEHICLE ROBOTIC FORCE-FEEDBACK TELE-OPERATION SYSTEM by ANKUR SARAF May 2011 Advisor: Dr. Abhilash K. Pandya. Major: Electrical Engineering. Degree: Master of Science. Modern tele-operation systems are trying to take into account haptic and audio information in addition to visual data to provide as feedback to the tele-operator.This research emphasizes on the development of hardware and software architecture to enhance the tele-operation capabilities of omni-directional inspection robot (ODIS). The system enhances the tele-operation capabilities by introducing force-feedback to the tele-operators. The conventional joystick is replaced with Novint Falcon haptic joystick which gets the feedback from the wireless accelerometer sensor module mounted on the top of ODIS. The wireless accelerometer sensor module uses XBee modules for sending the acceleration data to the server. The server in-turn is connected to the joystick which is used to direct the ODIS. The advantage of the wireless accelerometer system is it can be used not only with ODIS but with any other unmanned vehicle as well. Though this research uses ODIS robot as the platform, the ideas and concepts put forward are applicable to tele-operation of robots in general