Proposal of a Real-Time Test Platform for Tactile Internet Systems

This work aimed to develop a real-time test platform for systems associated with the tactile internet area. The proposal comprises a master device, a communication channel and a slave device. The master device is a tactile glove (wearable technology) that works as a tactile interface based on vibratory feedback. The master device can interact with virtual elements (local or remote). The Matlab/Simulink environment and a robotics toolbox form the communication channel and the slave device. The communication channel introduces a bidirectional connection of variable latency, and the slave device is defined as a robotic phantom omni manipulator emulated in Matlab/Simulink. The virtual robotic manipulator, the slave device, can generate different types of tactile sensations in the tactile glove, that is, in the master device. The platform can model tactile sensations such as coarse roughness, fine roughness, smoothness, dripping and softness. The proposed platform presented adequate results and can be used to test various algorithms and methods correlated to the tactile internet.

Human Grasp Mechanism Understanding, Human-Inspired Grasp Control and Robotic Grasping Planning for Agricultural Robots

As the end execution tool of agricultural robots, the manipulator directly determines whether the grasping task can be successfully completed. The human hand can adapt to various objects and achieve stable grasping, which is the highest goal for manipulator design and development. Thus, this study combines a multi-sensor fusion tactile glove to simulate manual grasping, explores the mechanism and characteristics of the human hand, and formulates rational grasping plans. According to the shape and size of fruits and vegetables, the grasping gesture library is summarized to facilitate the matching of optimal grasping gestures. By analyzing inter-finger curvature correlations and inter-joint pressure correlations, we investigated the synergistic motion characteristics of the human hand. In addition, the force data were processed by the wavelet transform algorithms and then the thresholds for sliding detection were set to ensure robust grasping. The acceleration law under the interaction with the external environment during grasping was also discussed, including stable movement, accidental collision, and placement of the target position. Finally, according to the analysis and summary of the manual gripping mechanism, the corresponding pre-gripping planning was designed to provide theoretical guidance and ideas for the gripping of robots.

Proposal of the Tactile Glove Device

This project aims to develop a tactile glove device and a virtual environment inserted in the context of tactile internet. The tactile glove allows a human operator to interact remotely with objects from a 3D environment through tactile feedback or tactile sensation. In other words, the human operator is able to feel the contour and texture from virtual objects. Applications such as remote diagnostics, games, remote analysis of materials, and others in which objects could be virtualized can be significantly improved using this kind of device. These gloves have been an essential device in all research on the internet next generation called "Tactile Internet", in which this project is inserted. Unlike the works presented in the literature, the novelty of this work is related to architecture, and tactile devices developed. They are within the 10 ms round trip latency limits required in a tactile internet environment. Details of hardware and software designs of a tactile glove, as well as the virtual environment, are described. Results and comparative analysis about round trip latency time in the tactile internet environment is developed.