Five Fingers Haptic Interface Robot HIRO: Design, Rendering, and Applications

Abstract

Multifinger haptic interface is the ultimate human haptic interface that would provide natural manipulation and feeling to the tip of each finger, same as the real hand interaction with the real world in daily-life tasks. This chapter introduced the second version of HIRO, including the hardware design, the control algorithm, and the software design including the system architecture, haptic rendering, and practical VR application. The hand with the arm provides a large workspace and reflects exactly the human hand movement as you are looking to your hand and arm in the mirror, with some differences related to hardware limitations and control methods that yet need to be improved. A comprehensive haptic system through demonstration of the future haptic science encyclopedia is presented. The architecture used was a multi-layer network framework that decoupled the haptic from graphic on to separate machines. The architecture maintained the high update rate needed for the haptic servoloop. Also, an accurate collision detection algorithm that considers the shape of human fingertips is developed. A physically based modeling using the finite element method (FEM) combined with an elementary displacement approach proved to ensure stable interaction and realistic forces calculation for a relatively complex deformable model in real time. The approach takes into considerations interaction with multipoint contacts where other approaches failed to achieve such interaction due difficulty in calculating forces at 1 KHz. The FHSE application was demonstration at World Expo 2005. People enjoyed the demonstration, where the majority were satisfied with the system as it provided a unique experience. Finally, combining technologies such as virtual reality and haptic robotics enables us to extend the capabilities and effectiveness of simulators. We anticipate that the proposed system will bring the notice of many researchers to the feasibility of implementing multifinger haptic interfaces. Although, every one agree on the importance of such interface, but many obstacles are still preventing the advancement of this research field. This chapter provided a complete picture on how this could be achieved. The greatest lesson of such project was the collaboration between robotics community and virtual reality community is necessary to achieve a better and comprehensive sophisticated haptic robot. Eventhough , I was the leader of the software development side including the haptic rendering and VR application, I was involved from the beginning in the process of designing the hardware and the control algorithms as well, useful feedback was the result of such collaboration. There are a number of future directions that can apply to this research. First, it is desirable to test the presented architecture in the presence of large delay and apply some techniques to compensate it. Second, develop more robust control algorithm for the arm movements to reflect the exact motion of the human hand, this will make the interface manipulation very natural. Also, make the hardware itself smarter and safer.