Teleoperation system with collision avoidance capability based on virtual radar

It is well known that during long-distance teleoperation, the operator's performance degrades due to the existing time delay. As a consequence, reliability and safety may deteriorate. To ameliorate the problem, operator support through a dedicated computer-based system has been envisioned. We propose a so-called virtual radar concept which we consider as a kind of shared intelligence. The virtual radar is used as a means for displaying collision information with regard to the whole manipulator. Possible link collisions, which are generally difficult to be recognized by the operator, are detected by the computer and effectively mapped as an unreachable area around the end-effector. We use real-time computer graphics which is overlaid on the real image. Furthermore, the control system restricts automatically the master arm motion when the operator approaches the mapped collision area. We have verified the effectiveness of our approach by experiments with a real telerobot system.