Remote equipment control through virtual reality feedback

This paper presents a method for remotely controlling articulated equipment such as robot arms through a "manipulation" of their virtual representation by hand held actuators. The object is to take advantage of the superior hand/eye coordination of humans together with the flexibility of scale and imagerie of virtual visualization. The main difficulty lies in effectively representing control limits to the operator. This is resolved through animated representations in the virtual space. The proposed technique has applications for high resolution equipment control in hostile environments or the control of very large or very small scale equipment.