A human‐robot collaboration method for uncertain surface scanning

Abstract

Robots are increasingly expected to replace humans in many repetitive and high‐precision tasks, of which surface scanning is a typical example. However, it is usually difficult for a robot to independently deal with a surface scanning task with uncertainties in, for example the irregular surface shapes and surface properties. Moreover, it usually requires surface modelling with additional sensors, which might be time‐consuming and costly. A human‐robot collaboration‐based approach that allows a human user and a robot to assist each other in scanning uncertain surfaces with uniform properties, such as scanning human skin in ultrasound examination is proposed. In this approach, teleoperation is used to obtain the operator's intent while allowing the operator to operate remotely. After external force perception and friction estimation, the orientation of the robot end‐effector can be autonomously adjusted to keep as perpendicular to the surface as possible. Force control enables the robotic manipulator to maintain a constant contact force with the surface. And hybrid force/motion control ensures that force, position, and pose can be regulated without interfering with each other while reducing the operator's workload. The proposed method is validated using the Elite robot to perform a mock B‐ultrasound scanning experiment.

Design and Quantitative Assessment of Teleoperation-Based Human–Robot Collaboration Method for Robot-Assisted Sonography

“…In addition, some novel control schemes were investigated to improve the teleoperation control system. In our previous work [34], a shared control method was investigated to improve control performance and reduce the workload of human operators for ultrasound scanning.…”

“…Touch X was used as the leader device. A teleoperation control mapping algorithm was developed to map the relative pose between the Touch tip frame F T T and the Touch base frame F T B to the relative pose between robot base frame F B and the end-effector frame F E , in our previous work [34].…”