Modular Development of Master-Slave Asymmetric Teleoperation Systems With a Novel Workspace Mapping Algorithm

Abstract

This paper proposes a modular teleoperation software platform based on the robot operating system (ROS), which is flexible and portable for different master and slave devices. The main issues for the modularity are to develop its control modules in MATLAB/Simulink and access ROS by the robotics system toolbox, which will facilitate the design, analysis, and adjustment of the control algorithm in teleoperation systems greatly. In addition, a case study for this kind of modular teleoperation system is carried out, which is composed of a Geomagic Touch as the master device and a robotic arm of the Rethink Baxter robot as the slave device. Due to the asymmetric structure property between the master and slave devices, the proper workspace mapping which can cover the whole workspace of the slave robot and simultaneously achieve an excellent mapping accuracy becomes a challenging issue. Different from the traditional methods, a hybrid workspace mapping algorithm is proposed, which uses the joint space mapping to cover the whole workspace of the slave device and the operating space mapping to conduct the elaborate manipulation. A smoothing switch law between the joint space mapping and the operating space mapping is also designed. Comparative experiments are carried out, and the results verify the effectiveness and excellent performance of the proposed design methodology.

Keywords

• Teleoperation
• workspace mapping
• robot operating system (ROS)
• MATLAB/Simulink