温冷環境と力覚を双方向伝送するテレ・ハプティクス・ロボットアーム・システムの開発

―力覚ウェアラブル装置における温冷感覚の再現性・応答性の改善―

抄録

Robot systems capable of experiencing remote environments are urgently required for future lack of manpower and aging society. In this study, the development of the tele-existence robot arm in which human beings can experience not only the haptic environment but also the thermal (hot/cold) environment was focused on. In this report, the temperature transmission system was actually developed, and the trial operations were conducted. In the operations, a remote finger-tip-like temperature measuring unit touching a moderately (50degC)-heated test block (aluminum) transmitted a PWM signal of a temperature variation to an on-site wearable unit. Consequently, the reproduction of the remote temperature sensing data was succeeded by controlled heating based on the transmitted information in the wearable unit. In this paper, first, the reproducibility was indicated by the result of the positive(hot) temperature variation of the temperature measurement unit of the on-site finger probe in the wearable unit. Second, comparison between reproductivities of two types of thermal controll units of wearable device to generate a cold environment was made.