Development of a visual space-mouse

The pervasiveness of computers in everyday life coupled with recent rapid advances in computer technology have created both the need and the means for sophisticated human-computer interaction (HCI) technology. Despite all the progress in computer technology and robotic manipulation, the interfaces for controlling manipulators have changed very little in the last decade. Therefore human-computer interfaces for controlling robotic manipulators are of great interest. A flexible and useful robotic manipulator is one capable of movement in three translational degrees of freedom, and three rotational degrees of freedom. In addition to research labs, six degree of freedom robots can be found in construction areas or other environments unfavorable for human beings. This paper proposes an intuitive and convenient visually guided interface for controlling a robot with six degrees of freedom. Two orthogonal cameras are used to track the position and the orientation of the hand of the user. This allows the user to control the robotic arm in a natural way.