Tactile feedback improves control of 3D-printed robot arms in teleoperation
TacGELLO: Tactile Contact Feedback for a 3D-Printed Teleoperation Leader
Robotics
Summary
Controlling robot arms remotely can be hard because operators don't feel when the robot touches or lifts objects. The authors created TacGELLO, a system that adds touch feedback by using the robot's motors and sensors to signal contact and resistance to the operator's hand. This helps the operator better control the gripper, as shown by reduced grasp errors and quicker response times in experiments. TacGELLO improves the feeling of touch through vibrations and movement resistance without needing extra hardware.
What this means in practice
- •For industrial robot operators: Enhance remote control of robotic arms by adding tactile cues for contact and load, improving precision in manipulation tasks.
- •For robotics hardware designers: Integrate tactile feedback using existing servos and sensors in 3D-printed leader devices to provide users with better grasp and lifting sensations.
Authors
Younsoo Kim, Sangmin Song, Sarath Kodagoda, Marc Carmichael, Karthick Thiyagarajan
Abstract
Passive leader arms transmit an operator's motion without returning remote contact or load cues. TacGELLO uses the existing servos of a 3D-printed leader for tactile contact feedback at the gripper trigger and current-based load cues at the arm joints. AnySkin contact detection activates a trigger position hold, while changes in follower joint current adjust leader-servo output limits to command resistance during lifting. Across six UR3 sessions with one operator, sent-command tracking error was 0.15--0.36$^\circ$ RMSE, with estimated trajectory lag of 82--98\,ms. Tactile onset was logged in 60 of 62 segmented TacGELLO grasp intervals. Median commanded closure after tactile or width-based contact references was 0.7--2.1\,mm with TacGELLO and 13.0--13.9\,mm with the original interface.