Mechanical Constraint Identification in Model-Mediated Teleoperation

Model-Mediated Teleoperation (MMT) is a form of teleoperation where a model is used to display operator commands to the environment and environmental feedback to the operator. This circumvents the performance-stability trade-off to which many other teleoperation methods are prone under high time delays. An aspect of MMT which has received little attention is the modelling of rigid-body constraints, which are important for many manipulation tasks. In this paper, we detail a description of rigid body constraints and highlight a specific type of contact: the Lower Pair, of which the contacts found in hinged doors and household drawers, for instance, are examples. We also present a method for estimating these Lower Pairs and test it in a real world scenario. Results show that it is robust to measurement noise, as well as small amounts of movement in the constrained directions.