Dynamics and Control of Robotic Manipulators with Contact and Friction

5Force Feedback and Haptic Rendering

5.1 Overview of Robot Force Feedback

Robot force feedback generally provides the user in a teleoperation system the force feeling scaled with that of the slave robot via the haptic device. Also, the force feeling may come from the virtual robot in a virtual environment. Haptic devices are useful for tasks where visual information is not sufficient and may induce unacceptable manipulation errors, such as surgery or teleoperation in radioactive/chemical environments. The aim of haptic devices is to provide the user with a realistic feeling of the situation [1].

Haptic devices can be divided into many types [2], such as hand‐controllers with force feedback, force‐feedback gloves, exoskeleton haptic devices, and vibrotactile devices. In this chapter, we mainly discuss hand‐controllers with force feedback.

Hand‐controllers with force feedback can be divided into serial, parallel, and composed types. The Phantom product series from 3D Systems in the USA are a common serial force feedback device (see Figure 5.1). Parallel force feedback services are represented by products from Force Dimension in Switzerland, which are developed on a parallel delta mechanism (see Figure 5.2). The number of degree of freedoms (DoF) of motion or force present at the device body interface (the number of dimensions characterizing the possible movements or forces exchanged between device and operator) depends on the application.

Figure 5.1Phantom omni haptic device. ...