Haptic Telerobotics Application To Assistive Technology For Children With Disabilities

Robotic systems for master-slave teleoperation with haptic feedback capability have been used in diverse areas such as surgical simulation and telerehabilitation. Such systems have not yet been used by children with disabilities who can potentially control the master human-machine interface to sense and manipulate objects using the slave robot. This paper presents a comparison of candidate robots for the roles of the master robot as the child’s human-machine interface and the slave robot for object manipulation in the environment. After establishing the appropriate robot choice, the control parameters for the stable system are determined. The system will subsequently be used for studies with children with disabilities doing manipulation tasks such as haptically guided drawing and painting in virtual and physical environments.