Online Generation of Virtual Fixture for Bilateral Teleoperation Based on Intention Recognition

The bilateral teleoperation with force feedback has been widely used. Besides the stability and transparency of the teleoperation system, the facility of teleoperation can be achieved when the virtual fixture is adopted. This paper presents an online generation approach of the virtual fixture for bilateral teleoperation based on recognition of operation intention. The operation intention is recognized through states analysis. This recognition method avoids the complication of button switch, and avoids the complex and ambiguity of the Markov method. There are three operation intentions to be considered: the first is to keep the current location; the second is to move along a straight line; the third is to move along a circle. There are two types of boundary between operational states: one is the S type boundary, which is the deviation of the guiding path for the virtual fixture; the other is the T type boundary, which is the position where the master device stays more than the threshold time. A novel agent-based three-channel structure is presented for the virtual fixture in the bilateral teleoperation. This structure needs no force sensors in the master device. Finally, an experiment system for robotic teleoperation integrated with a virtual environment is exhibited.