Implementation and design of a teleoperation system based on a VMEBUS/68020 pipelined architecture

A pipelined control design and architecture for a force-feedback teleoperation system that is being implemented at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and which will be integrated with the autonomous portion of the testbed to achieve share control is described. At the local site, the operator sees real-time force/torque displays and moves two 6-degree of freedom (dof) force-reflecting hand-controllers as his hands feel the contact force/torques generated at the remote site where the robots interact with the environment. He also uses a graphical user menu to monitor robot states and specify system options. The teleoperation software is written in the C language and runs on MC68020-based processor boards in the VME chassis, which utilizes a real-time operating system; the hardware is configured to realize a four-stage pipeline configuration. The environment is very flexible, such that the system can easily be configured as a stand-alone facility for performing independent research in human factors, force control, and time-delayed systems.