Two-finger exoskeleton with force feedback for a mobile robot teleoperation

Abstract

In this work, the design, manufacturing, instrumentation, and application of a two-finger exoskeleton with force feedback are presented. The exoskeleton is based on remote center of motion mechanisms in order to avoid mechanical interference with the user’s fingers and is manufactured by three-dimensional printing. The developed exoskeleton is applied in a mobile robot teleoperation by mapping the finger movements in forward and turning commands for the robot. The presence of obstacles detected by the robot is sensed by the user by means of a feedback force. The problem of simultaneously communicating a data acquisition card and the robot hardware by MATLAB® Simulink® was solved by using an external Wi-Fi module. The result is a lightweight exoskeleton which is able to communicate bidirectionally with a mobile robot by a personal computer for teleoperation tasks. The success of the system implementation is proven by a set of experiments presented in the final part of the article.