Humans and Robots, Hand-in-Hand: Using Bilateral Telepresence to Turn Robotic Hands into Wearable Haptic Exoskeletons

Haptic feedback is pivotal to telemanipulation; it equips human operators with intuitive physical information about a distant environment. Anthropomorphic robotic hands demonstrate a similar aptitude for complex remote manipulation. Past efforts to enrich robotic hands with haptic feedback often required prohibitively expensive specialized hardware (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$&gt;\mathbf{5 0, 0 0 0} U S D$</tex> grippers and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$&gt;\mathbf{5, 0 0 0} U S D$</tex> gloves) that only displayed unidirectional force feedback. In this work, we present the Hand-in-Hand (HiH): an inexpensive system to realize hand telepresence with 3D force feedback via bilateral robot control. By transforming an inexpensive robotic hand (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$&lt;500$</tex> USD each) into a wearable haptic exoskeleton, users can intuitively control and feel what a distant physical agent touches in real-time. Experimentation reveals: an average motion latency of 63 ms over WLAN; an average joint position tracking RMSE of 3.73 deg; and the force feedback magnitude peaking at <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\sim 6 \mathrm{N}$</tex>. Safety is passively ensured via sacrificial exoskeleton parts that prevent excessive loads from harming wearers. Issues regarding stability and transparency are partially addressed using saturated virtual friction. Nonetheless, the HiH presents a novel, intuitive, and low-cost approach to haptic telemanipulation with humanoid robotic hands.