Wearable haptic glove using micro hydraulic system for control of construction robot system with VR environment

Abstract

Over the past few decades, various haptic devices have been developed in order to control various robot systems remotely. The actuating systems for most existing haptic devices including glove type require lots of external auxiliary equipment. Because of this, the motion of the user is restricted by the length of the electric wires or pneumatic tubes attached to this equipment. A compact actuation system, including related equipment, is thus indispensable for a wearable haptic device to be truly effective. To resolve the problem of hampered motion and reach, a micro hydraulic actuating system was developed in this research. It was composed of a slim, flexible artificial muscle, a compact hydraulic module for actuating the muscle, and a micro pressure sensor for measuring without flux loss. The characteristics of the muscle were investigated for their control capacity. Once these analyses were completed, a lightweight and compact actuation system was built incorporating a glove typed wearable haptic device. By virtue of the developed micro hydraulic system, the wearable haptic glove was able to operate independently of any external equipment, and movement was completely free of any restrictions from wires or tubes. The construction robot remotely controlled needs a compact haptic device as a motion controller for it and the haptic glove we developed makes it possible to control the motion of construction robot with easy.