ASA 124th Meeting New Orleans 1992 October

4pPPb7. EXOS research on the design of haptic interface and force reflective controller.

Bin An

Brian Eberman

EXOS, Inc., 2A Gill St., Woburn, MA 01801

EXOS had developed two state-of-the-art prototype master controllers for controlling robot hand and manipulators under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program with NASA. One of such devices is a two degree-of-freedom (DOF) sensory and force reflecting exoskeleton (SAFiRE) which is worn on the hand of a human operator. It measures the movement of the human finger and reflects the interaction forces between the slave robot hand and the environment back to the human finger. The second device is a position sensing Exoskeleton ArmMaster(trademark) (EAM) that is worn on the human operator's arm. This device simultaneously tracks the motions of the operator's three DOF shoulder and two DOF elbow. Both of these devices are currently controlling robots at NASA. Currently, a five-fingered SAFiRE and a force reflecting EAM are being developed under two phase II NASA SBIR grants. This paper will include discussion of: (1) the design of the current prototypes, (2) phase II project objectives, (3) human haptic interface design issues that must be addressed, (4) progress to date in addressing these issues.