Macro-micro tele-manipulation system based on body image embedding with contact feel, spatial motion and stereo vision

In this paper, we propose a novel macro-micro tele-manipulation system based on body image embedding with contact feel, spatial motion and stereo vision for micro-manipulation under a microscope. The basic concept of body image embedding for macro-micro tele-manipulation has been already proposed by the authors. The system proposed here has three new realization ideas. The first idea is the realization of realistic contact feeling which is attained by driving a voice coil motor according to the binary on/off information of the switch between micro-tools. The use of a voice coil motor not only saves the cost of the system, but also generates clearer tactile and auditory stimuli than a piezo actuator for sending contact information in a micro world to an operator. The switch between micro-tools does not detect the contact between the object to be manipulated and the tool for manipulation directly, but can be useful for some tasks. The second idea is the realization of spatial motion of the manipulation tool relative to the object to be manipulated, which is realized by the appropriate coordination of the 2-degree-of-freedom motions of the slave manipulators. The third idea is the realization of stereo vision under the constraint of the position/orientation consistency of an operator's body image between proprioception and vision, which is achieved by the special placement of the dual joysticks of the dual micro-manipulators. The effectiveness of the proposed realization method is verified experimentally by micro-drawing tasks where we need appropriate hybrid position/force control of the micro-tool for manipulation in a three-dimensional space.