Human Arm Posture Optimisation in Bilateral Teleoperation Through Interface Reconfiguration

In this paper, we propose a method for improving the human operator’s arm posture during bilateral teleoperation. The method is based on a musculoskeletal model that considers human operator’s arm dynamics and the feedback force from the haptic interface (master), which is used to control a robotic arm (slave) in a remote environment. We perform an online optimisation to find the optimal configuration that has the longest endurance time with respect to muscle fatigue. Next, a trajectory is generated on the haptic interface in order to guide the human arm into the optimal configuration. The teleoperation is temporarily suspended by decoupling the master from the slave robot when the haptic device is being reconfigured. Afterwards, the loop is coupled again and the slave robot is controlled from the position where it stopped after the haptic interface guided the operator’s arm to the optimised configuration. The main advantage of the proposed method is that the human operator can perform the task with less effort, which increases the endurance time. To validate our approach, we performed proof-of-concept experiments on a teleoperation system composed of two Franka Emika robots, where one was serving as master and the other as slave.