A wearable vibrotactile system for distributed guidance in teleoperation and virtual environments

Abstract

A novel wearable vibrotactile system is proposed in this article to enhance the performance of teleoperation robot systems. Using a wearable vibrotactile glove, the proposed system guides the operator in the master-slave control through a vibrotactile-visual guidance method. Based on sensory substitution, the vibrotactile-visual combined guidance method combines vibration stimuli and visual feedback to substitute the virtual guidance force. A vibrotactile potential field is constructed in the workspace of the master-operator to calculate the frequency of the vibration stimulus. To provide vibration stimuli, a novel vibrotactile glove is designed and manufactured based on the layout of the sensitive region of human hand. As the human hand is unable to discriminate vibration stimuli of all frequencies, the vibration stimulus is discretization according to the result of the vibration discriminability experiment. At last, two contrast experiments in obstacle-free and obstacle-existing environments are conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the wearable vibrotactile system. The results show that this wearable vibrotactile system is an effective solution for guiding the operators in teleoperation and virtual environments.

A sensor-less contact torque estimation and haptic feedback method in minimally invasive surgery

“…Based on sensory substitution, this method converts the value and direction of torque into vibration intensity and position and feeds back the vibration to surgeons by a wearable vibrotactile system. 25 The mapping relation between the torque and vibration intensity is shown in equation ( 20)…”

Review: the development of tactile feedback devices

“…Examples of these devices include tactile gloves/finger sleeves, tactile vests, etc., which use small vibration motors or small tactile drivers to generate tactile feedback. Dongming Bai et al [12]. proposed a new wearable vibration tactile system to enhance the performance of remotely-operated robotic systems.…”