| Summary: | The teleoperation of robot manipulators over the
internet suffers from variable delays in the communications.
Here we address a tele-assistance scenario, where a
remote operator assists a disabled or elderly user on daily
life tasks. Our behavioral approach uses local environment
information from robot sensing to help enable faster execution
for a given movement tolerance. This is achieved
through a controller that automatically slows the operator
down before having collisions, using a set of distributed
proximity sensors. The controller is made to gradually increase
the assistance in situations similar to those where
ollisions have occurred in the past, thus adapting to the
given operator, robot and task-set. Two controlled virtual
experiments for tele-assistance with a 5 DOF manipulator
were performed, with 300 ms and 600 ms mean variable
round-trip delays. The results showed significant improvements
in the median times of 12.6% and 16.5%, respectively.
Improvements in the subjective workload were
also seen with the controller. A first implementation on a
physical robot manipulator is described.
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