Reducing conflicting forces with co-adaptive haptic shared control using online time-varying operator identification

Haptic shared control (HSC) is a method to combine the abilities of humans and machines, in which human and automation jointly exert forces on an input device. According to human-centered design, the underlying controller for HSC should closely resemble human behavior. This paper aims to continuously adapt HSC based on an online identified...

Reducing conflicts in haptic shared control during curve negotiation

Haptic shared control enables continuous interaction between driver and automatic controller by means of torques on the steering wheel that guide towards a reference trajectory. Current haptic shared control systems induce conflicts when the reference trajectory of the automation differs from the drivers own desired trajectory, which can lead to...

A new haptic shared controller reducing steering conflicts

When drivers have opposing intentions to a haptic shared controller which, like the driver, can continuously control the vehicle through torques on the steering wheel, the driver has to fight against the controller torque to reach their goal. This phenomenon is called haptic shared control (steering) conflicts and are a reason for drivers to...

Haptic assistance improves tele-manipulation with two asymmetric slaves

Tele-manipulation of heavy loads typically requires the simultaneous use of two asymmetric slaves: a crane for vertical weight support; and a robot for accurate lateral positioning. The industrial standard prescribes a pair of operators for such tasks (one operator to control each slave), although in principle one operator might control both...

Adaptable Haptic Shared Control based on Grip Force: smoothly shifting control authority

An important design choice for Haptic Shared Control is the magnitude of assisting forces: high assisting forces are beneficial during agreement between operator and controller, but also result in larger conflict forces in case of disagreement. In order to use higher forces without increasing conflict forces, literature proposes Adaptable Haptic...

Design and real-world evaluation of three types of haptic lane-keeping support systems for truck drivers

Designing lane-keeping assistance (LKA) systems that are both effective and well-liked by drivers is a highly challenging process, that is not well understood. This is illustrated by a wide variety of market releases of LKA systems, and a large body of literature illustrating different designs and various evaluation methodologies that are often...

Increasing Acceptance of Tactile Feedback in UAV Teleoperations by Visualizing Force Fields

Due to the increasing complexity of controlling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), researchers have been trying to let automation take part of the UAV control in order to eliminate human error and reduce the workload of the operator. Such a system has been developed for UAV teleoperators which incorporates haptic feedback on the control stick...

Teleoperation Support System Robust to Uncertainties in Haptic Guidance

When tasks need to be performed in remote, potentially inaccessible and/or hostile environments for humans, it is often more convenient to send a robot. Such environments are often only partially known, and therefore not suitable for fully autonomous robots to operate in. In these situations teleoperation can be used, which combines the problem...

Haptic Shared Control in Deep Sea Mining: Enhancing Teleoperation of a Subsea Crawler

Deep sea mining is currently being investigated as a possibility to harvest valuable materials from mineral-rich areas located in water depths up to 2000 meters. One promising mining method is to employ a large crawler on the seabed, remotely controlled by an operator on the supporting vessel. Controlling such a vehicle is expected to be...

Tuning of a haptic collision avoidance system for UAV teleoperation: Using neuromuscular admittance measurements

This research investigates a neuromuscular analysis based tuning algorithm for haptic cues that has been hypothesized to simultaneously improve safety and workload when compared to heuristic tuning, applied to a haptic collision avoidance system for unmanned aircraft teleoperation. This novel tuning method considers the combined stiffness of the...

Learning a Slow Dynamic System: Training Enhancement by Haptic Shared Control

Humans learning to control slow dynamic systems (e.g. a large excavator) perceive complex system dynamics in combination with, the less intuitive, rate control method. Earlier research has described that humans control these systems by predicting the slow response on basis of an internal model of the system dynamics. Learning this internal model...

Robustness of Haptic Shared Control Against Model Inaccuracies During Telemanipulation

To improve teleoperated task performance and control effort, haptic shared control can assist the human operator along a safe and optimal path with continuous guiding forces from an automated controller. But previous research tested such shared control on tasks that were accurately defined in the controller (giving flawless guiding forces),...

The Effect of Online Adaptation on Conflicts in Haptic Shared Control for Free-Air Teleoperation Tasks

Haptic shared control provides artificial guiding forces on a control interface that support operators to perform tasks. Research has shown that this can improve task performance and reduce control effort. However conflicts between the human operator and support system are often reported which deteriorate performance and increase control effort....

The effect of offering Natural Force Feedback and Haptic Shared Control on Rate and Force Control of a Deep Sea Mining Suspended Grab

Experimental research with human subjects on the effect of offering different types of haptic feedback to improve the human performance during a deep-sea mining task using a suspended grab.

Haptic shared control improves tele-operated task performance towards performance in direct control

An tele-operation, haptic feedback from the remote environment to the human is often limited, which has been shown to negatively influence the performance and required time of tasks. The conventional research focus is on improving the quality of the haptic feedback (transparency), which may have led to significant improvement, but is still...