Haptic Field and Force Feedback Generation for Wheeled Vehicle Teleoperation on 2.5D Environments

Path drawing in a complex 2.5D environment in mobile robot navigation can be challenging, significantly when a horizon-parallel camera orientation hampers distance perception. This paper presents an innovative method of addressing this issue by creating a haptic field to provide remote operators with tactile feedback about the environment, enhancing their spatial awareness. Although rendering haptic feedback with point cloud data (PCD) from LiDAR is typically used, it is harsh to deliver dense data due to the bandwidth limitations of the remote networks. This paper proposes a method for creating a haptic field that compresses only the information necessary to distinguish the surrounding environment from primitive PCD and deliver it to the remote operator. The process for rendering continuous haptic feedback from low-resolution haptic fields is also proposed. In the experiment that provided repulsive feedback for obstacles and the bumpy extent of the road surface, the haptic feedback shows that the remote controller helped draw a path similar to the one directly controlled in the field.