FPGA-based controller for haptic devices

Teleoperation with force feedback is a complex task and a good haptic device is a key element. In this paper we present an innovative hardware/software structure used to control an actuated 6 dof joystick in a teleoperation task. To increase speed and reliability, parts of the kinematic calculation are embedded into the joystick controller. To implement this idea we used an FPGA to handle both the low level tasks and the algorithmic part of the approach. This speedup does not preclude the possibility of changing the control strategies, the parameters and the feedback calculations as well, necessary to carry out experiments about human perception. Thus the need of flexibility and performance, and the choice or an FPGA. We tested the setup proposed in a real teleoperation task within our software framework (Penelope) collecting data of speed, precision and reliability.