Haptic Guidance with a Soft Exoskeleton Reduces Error in Drone Teleoperation

Rognon, Carine; Wu, Amy R.; Mintchev, Stefano; Ijspeert, Auke Jan; Floreano, Dario

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93399-3_35

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Commercial approaches often provide visual feedback from on-board cameras, while solutions providing other types of feedback (e.g., haptic, auditory) are very rare in the literature. For example, Rognon et al [19] devise a cable-driven haptic guidance system for the body.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Connectivity-Maintenance Teleoperation of a UAV Fleet With Wearable Haptic Feedback

Aggravi

Pacchierotti²,

Giordano³

2021

IEEE Trans. Automat. Sci. Eng.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the design of a decentralized connectivity-maintenance algorithm for the teleoperation of a team of multiple UAVs, together with an extensive human subject evaluation in virtual and real environments. The proposed connectivity-maintenance algorithm enhances earlier works by improving their applicability, safety, effectiveness, and ease of use, by including: (i) an airflow-avoidance behavior that avoids stack downwash phenomena in rotor-based aerial robots; (ii) a consensus-based action for enabling fast displacements with minimal topology changes by having all follower robots moving at the leader's velocity; (iii) an automatic decrease of the minimum degree of connectivity, enabling an intuitive and dynamic expansion/compression of the formation; and (iv) an automatic detection and resolution of deadlock configurations, i.e., when the robot leader cannot move due to counterbalancing connectivityand external-related inputs. We also devised and evaluated different interfaces for teleoperating the team as well as different ways of receiving information about the connectivity force acting on the leader. Results of two human subject experiments show that the proposed algorithm is effective in various situations. Moreover, using haptic feedback to provide information about the team connectivity outperforms providing both no feedback at all and sensory substitution via visual feedback. Note to Practitioners-The control of one drone is usually performed with a remote controller (similar to a joypad) that uses radio-wave signals. When controlling more than one drone, even a simple task such as moving the whole team around become very challenging. Developing an easy, yet efficient way to impart commands to a formation of drones is necessary to achieve any complex task. This work proposes a framework to control a fleet of drones (quadrotors) in an intuitive way, while receiving meaningful and effective information on the state of the formation. The proposed technique does not rely on any absolute positioning system (e.g., GPS) or centralized command center. Instead, it only uses the relative position of the drones with respect to each other, and all computations are designed in a decentralized fashion. These features make the proposed framework ready for deployment in different highimpact applications, such as in surveillance, search-and-rescue, and disaster response scenarios. Index Terms-Multi-robot systems, Human-centered robotics.

show abstract

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is important to highlight that(19) only requires availability of the relative robots positions and the communication ofd c,j by neighboring robots.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Connectivity-Maintenance Teleoperation of a UAV Fleet With Wearable Haptic Feedback

Aggravi

Pacchierotti²,

Giordano³

2021

IEEE Trans. Automat. Sci. Eng.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The use of pneumatic actuators for teleoperation has started in 1993 [31] and has been regularly studied since [32][33][34] (see Section 2.3 for medical applications). They are also used in soft robotics in order to perform a compliant grasp such as in [35,36].…”

Section: Compliant Actuatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Pneumatic Actuators Used for the Design of Medical Simulators and Medical Tools

Senac

Lelevé

Moreau

et al. 2019

MTI

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Simulators have been traditionally used for centuries during medical gestures training. Nowadays, mechatronic technologies have opened the way to more evolved solutions enabling objective assessment and dedicated pedagogic scenarios. Trainees can now practice in virtual environments representing various kind of patient and body parts including physio-pathologies issues. Gestures, to be mastered, vary according to each medical specialty (e.g., ultrasound probe orientations, or forceps installation during assisted delivery). Hence, medical students need kinesthetic feedback in order to significantly improve their learning capabilities. Gesture simulators require haptic devices with variable stiffness actuators. Existing solutions do not always fit the requirements because of their significant size. Contrary to electric actuators, pneumatic technology is low-cost, available off-the-shelf and offers a better mass–power ratio. However, it presents two main drawbacks: nonlinear dynamics and need for a compressed air supply. During the last decade, we have developed several haptic solutions based on pneumatic actuation (e.g., birth simulator, epidural needle insertion simulator) and, recently, in a joint venture with Prisme laboratory, a pneumatic probe master device for remote ultrasonography. This paper recalls literature scientific approaches on pneumatic actuation developed in the medical context and illustrated with the aforementioned applications to highlight the benefits.

show abstract

“…For this purpose, a cable-driven device has been added in the FlyJacket in order to give haptic guidance in the form of kinesthetic feedback to the users torso [3] (see Fig. 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a previous user study [3], this setup have been tested in a short flight task of following waypoints in the sky ( Fig. 1 E and F).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Haptic Feedback Perception and Learning With Cable-Driven Guidance in Exosuit Teleoperation of a Simulated Drone

Rognon

Ramachandran

et al. 2019

IEEE Trans. Haptics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Robotics teleoperation enables human operators to control the movements of distally located robots. The development of new wearable interfaces as alternatives to hand-held controllers has created new modalities of control, which are more intuitive to use. Nevertheless, such interfaces also require a period of adjustment before operators can carry out their tasks proficiently. In several fields of human-machine interaction, haptic guidance has proven to be an effective training tool for enhancing user performance. This work presents the results of psychophysical and motor learning studies that were carried out with human participant to assess the effect of cable-driven haptic guidance for a task involving aerial robotic teleoperation. The guidance system was integrated into an exosuit, called the Flyjacket, that was developed to control drones with torso movements. Results for the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) and from the Stevens Power Law suggest that the perception of force on the users' torso scales linearly with the amplitude of the force exerted through the cables and the perceived force is close to the magnitude of the stimulus. Motor learning studies reveal that this form of haptic guidance improves user performance in training, but this improvement is not retained when participants are evaluated without guidance.

show abstract

Haptic Guidance with a Soft Exoskeleton Reduces Error in Drone Teleoperation

Cited by 10 publications

References 23 publications

Connectivity-Maintenance Teleoperation of a UAV Fleet With Wearable Haptic Feedback

Connectivity-Maintenance Teleoperation of a UAV Fleet With Wearable Haptic Feedback

A Review of Pneumatic Actuators Used for the Design of Medical Simulators and Medical Tools

Haptic Feedback Perception and Learning With Cable-Driven Guidance in Exosuit Teleoperation of a Simulated Drone

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About