Development of a Teleoperative Quadrupedal Manipulator

Abstract

This paper outlines the design and operation of a teleoperated quadrupedal robot enhanced with a manipulator arm and gripper. Using the mobile quadruped platform Laikago, a ViperX 300 robot arm and a wearable inertia based motion capture system, a low-cost robot was assembled capable of hybrid robot and manipulator control to allow seamless and intuitive human to robot interface. Vision for the user is provided through a 3D camera mounted at the front and a stereo camera mounted on the robot arm end-effector. The robot is fully controllable using a wearable inertial based motion capture suit. To verify the functionality of the whole system prior to testing on the real robot, physical simulations were conducted and successfully demonstrated the capabilities of the proposed teleoperation framework.