Bilateral telemanipulation of unknown objects using remote dexterous in-hand manipulation strategies

This paper presents an approach to perform bilateral in-hand (dexterous) telemanipulation of unknown objects. The proposed approach addresses three of the main problems in telemanipulation: kinematic issues due to the physical differences between the robotic and the human hands; obtaining coherent haptic feedback to provide information about the manipulation at any time; and time-delays that can affect the stability of the overall closed-loop system. The novelty of the approach lays on the shared control scheme, where the robotic hand uses the tactile and the kinematic information to manipulate an unknown object while the operator commands a desired orientation of the object without caring about the relation between her/his commands and the actual hand movements. The viability of the proposed approach has been tested through transatlantic telemanipulation experiments between Mexico and Spain. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.