<title>Kinesthetic replay for error diagnosis in time-delayed teleoperation</title>

Abstract

For Teleoperation in the presence of communication delays, the detection and correction of error conditions is critically important. This paper discusses an extension of the Teleprogramming system for aiding an operator in understanding error conditions. A 'shadow robot' driven by symbolic statements generated at the remote site has been developed. Also developed is an operational mode in which the operator may replay a sequence of motions leading to an error condition. In this mode the input device is constrained to move along the trajectory corresponding to the remote trajectory. The remaining degrees of freedom available to the input device are exploited to relay kinesthetic information to the operator. Experimental results indicating the usefulness of these additions in diagnosing error conditions are presented.