Control of man-machine system for dexterous manipulation

With the development of robotic technology, many robots have been applied to various fields, such as factories, construction sites, and so on. However, most of the robots have been applied to tasks which require them to repeat the same operation for the known environment automatically. Execution of tasks with unknown environments is still a difficult problem for today's autonomous robot. A robotic system which cooperates with a human operator seems to be an effective approach to solve the problem. In this paper, we are going to discuss a control strategy for a robotic system directly maneuvered by an operator like a human amplifier. The results in this paper could be applied to a telerobotic system. We propose an alternative control algorithm based on `virtual tool' dynamics for the mechanical system. The control algorithm is designed without explicit models of the environment and the human operator. By controlling the mechanical system so as to imitate the dynamics of a tool, the algorithm specifies both the human force amplification ratio and the maneuverability of the system.