Development of a Haptic Telemanipulator System Based on MR Brakes and Estimated Torques of AC Servo Motors

This research focuses on design, manufacturing and testing of a 3-DOF haptic telemanipulator system featuring MR brakes and torque estimator of AC servomotors. The haptic telemanipulators are composed of a slave manipulator and a haptic master manipulator. The slave manipulator is a commercial industrial robot with three-rotary DOF (elbow manipulator). The haptic master manipulator is designed with the same kinematic chain and kinematic dimensions as the slave. At the joints of the master, MR brakes are integrated in order to generate braking torques corresponding to the torques estimated from the servomotors of the slave. With this configuration, a desired force acting on the operator of the master slave, which is proportional to the load at the end-effecter of the slave can be archived. After the introduction, design and simulation of the proposed haptic telemanipulator system, experimental work is conducted and some experimental results are obtained and presented with discussion.