Bilateral Teleoperation Control of a Redundant Manipulator with an RCM Kinematic Constraint

In this paper, a bilateral teleoperation control of a serial robot manipulator, which guarantees a Remote Center of Motion (RCM) constraint in its kinematic level, is developed. A two-layered approach based on the energy tank model is proposed to achieve haptic feedback on the end effector with a pedal switch. The redundancy of the manipulator is exploited to maintain the RCM constraint using the decoupled Cartesian Admittance Control. Transparency and stability of the proposed bilateral teleoperation are demonstrated using a KUKA LWR4+ serial robot and a Sigma 7 haptic manipulator with an RCM constraint in augmented reality. The results prove that the control can achieve not only the bilateral teleoperation but also maintain the RCM constraint.