Teleoperating System for Manipulating a Moon Exploring Robot on the Earth

Abstract

Such a teleoperating system has been needed that enables scientists on the earth to make a moon-exploring robot carry out geological explorations on the moon by means of the same movements as their movements on the earth. Studies have been carried out on moon-exploring robot teleoperating systems to reproduce the operator’s movements. However, an existing complete-contact type of unit for measuring the movements has disadvantages in that it is large-sized, requiring skill acquirement and it is likely to restrict the operator’s free movements, making precise movements impossible. To overcome these disadvantages, we have made a study on a teleoperating system equipped with an almost non-contact type of movement measuring unit. It was verified whether our originally-developed teleoperating system proposed herein might be capable of making the robot perform fine hand movement tasks with no need for skill acquirement and no restriction on operator’s movements. The result demonstrated that the proposed teleoperating system is capable of manipulating the robot by means of operator’s movements, which reproduce those in geological explorations on the moon.