Development of haptic feedback control stick for remote control between different structures

This paper develops a haptic feedback control stick for remote control of a two parallel wheeled rover. The authors apply a bilateral controller for this remote operating-operated system in which their structures are different. Thus, the developed haptic feedback control stick plays a role as not only an input device to give the velocity information to the system but also an output device by which the operator feels an estimated external force applied to the wheel of the rover. The haptic feedback control stick is strongly expected the operator can control the operated rover more intuitively and more safely. In this paper, the authors experimented by combining a linear-slide-type control stick and a single wheel computer simulator of the rover. However, the operator felt a force except the estimated force to the rover's wheel, in conditions that a time delay occurred because of a large dynamical difference between the control stick and the rover. Therefore, two types of experiments were compared, i.e., one used only the bilateral control and the other used switching the bilateral control and the force control according to a value of the time delay. These experimental results were discussed and evaluated as focusing on a situation when a time delay occurred.