Assist Control Method for Positioning Task Using Master-Slave Manipulators with Flexibility on Slave Arm

This paper presents a new assist control method for the positioning task of master-slave manipulators. The considered manipulator has a flexible slave arm, which causes deterioration of both the positioning accuracy and the maneuverability owing to elastic vibration of the slave arm. In order to improve the positioning accuracy and reduce operator's load, an assist control method is proposed by partly applying direct feedback of the acceleration of the tip of the slave arm to the bilateral control. The features of the proposed assist control are (1) the autonomic suppression control of the vibration, (2) the switching of controllers corresponding to task process, and (3) the force feedback of vibration information to an operator. Both the maneuverability and the operating feeling are evaluated on the basis of the success time of the task and by using the SD (Semantic Differential) method with the principle component analysis. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed assist control method.