Bilateral Humanoid Teleoperation System Using Whole-Body Exoskeleton Cockpit TABLIS

TLDR

The authors present a design approach for bilateral teleoperation of a humanoid robot. The system couples a seat‑type whole‑body exoskeleton cockpit (TABLIS) with master‑side software that simulates a remote 2D/3D ground surface and slave‑side software that stabilizes the humanoid JAXON against operator errors. The approach enables quasi‑3D step traversing and validates the system’s effectiveness.

Abstract

We describe a system design approach for the bilateral teleoperation of a humanoid robot. We have focused on bipedal stability and 2D/3D locomotion space problems. Our proposed system has two robot hardware and two control software. The master side hardware is newly developed seat-type whole-body exoskeleton cockpit called "TABLIS," and the master side software reproduces a remote 2D/3D ground surface and overcomes the space limitation of locomotion, such as the use of treadmills. The slave side software prevents the humanoid from falling down in cases where an operator provides an inaccurate input. We used humanoid robot "JAXON" as a slave side hardware. We have achieved a bilateral quasi-3D step traversing and demonstrated the validity of our system design.