UPPER EXTREMITY EXOSKELETON FOR TELEOPERATION OF HYBRID ROBOT

This paper shows the development of a teleoperation system for a hybrid robot, which counts with locomotion system by caterpillar tracks and has a 5 DOF manipulator arm. The document begins with a brief review of exoskeletons to present a proposal for upper limb exoskeleton. A brief description of the Robot VALI (Light Anti-explosive Vehicle) is presented, but nevertheless the robot is not the object of study of this article, there are not going to be comments about it. The set point or input of the system is the motion data captured by an upper limb exoskeleton by linear potentiometers sensors. Such teleoperation system was developed in order to allow the user the simultaneous action of all degrees of freedom in the manipulator arm and the gripper. A discussion is made about the differences in each of the joints to achieve the coupling of the systems, robot manipulator and exoskeleton mechanism. This development seeks to overcome the constrains of the current systems for teleoperation of hybrid robots, based on gamepad controls, which do not allow the operation of several degrees of freedom at the same time; limiting the user to achieve the location and final orientation of the final effector through independent and non-simultaneous movements of the different joints of the manipulator. This work includes the kinematics analysis by screw theory for the exoskeleton mechanism and computer simulation in a virtual model developed on Simmechanics, Matlab® platform to validate proper function of the device.