A Low-Cost 6-DoF Master Device for Robotic Teleoperation

Abstract

This paper deals with the design and application of a low-cost master device with six degrees of freedom (6-DoF), with haptic feedback along the three translational axes. The proposed device has been developed using the association of a Novint Falcon, a commercial 3-DoF translational haptic interface, and of a spherical wrist integrating an inertial measurement unit to fully control the orientation. The main focus of this paper is the practical issues related to the use of such a master device for robotic teleoperation and its capabilities to be used in medical applications, namely for robot-assisted Doppler sonography. Experimentations in a tele-operation platform using a slave collaborative robot demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed 6-DoF device.