A bimanual robotic teleoperation architecture with anthropomorphic hybrid grippers for unstructured manipulation tasks

Bimanual telemanipulation is vital for facilitating robots to complete complex and dexterous tasks that involve two handheld objects under teleoperation scenarios. However, the bimanual configuration introduces higher complexity, dynamics, and uncertainty, especially in those uncontrolled and unstructured environments, which require more advanced system integration. This paper presents a bimanual robotic teleoperation architecture with modular anthropomorphic hybrid grippers for the purpose of improving the telemanipulation capability under unstructured environments. Generally, there are two teleoperated subsystems within this architecture. The first one is the Leap Motion Controller and the anthropomorphic hybrid robotic grippers. Two 3D printed anthropomorphic hybrid robotic grippers with modular joints and soft layer augmentations are designed, fabricated, and equipped for telemanipulation tasks. A Leap Motion Controller is used to track the motion of two human hands, while each hand is utilized to teleoperate one robotic gripper. The second one is the haptic devices and the robotic arms. Two haptic devices are adopted as the master devices while each of them takes responsibility for one arm control. Based on such a framework, an average RMSE (root-mean-square-error) value of 0.0204 rad is obtained in joint tracking. Nine sign-language demonstrations and twelve object grasping tasks were conducted with the robotic gripper teleoperation. A challenging bimanual manipulation task for an object with 5.2 kg was well addressed using the integrated teleoperation system. Experimental results show that the proposed bimanual teleoperation system can effectively handle typical manipulation tasks, with excellent adaptabilities for a wide range of shapes, sizes, and weights, as well as grasping modes.