Telepresence: The state of the art remote handling

technology
[Extended Abstract]
Amar Banerji
Division of Remote Handling & Robotics
BHABH ATOMIC RESEARCH CANTRE
Trombay, Mumbai 400085
drhr@barc.gov.in; amar.banerji@gmail.com
Introduction
Telepresence is a technology-concept through which a human operator can feel that he/
she is present in a remote place. The intensity of the involvement depends on the task,
for example, watching a live coverage of a sports event is akin to be present in the
stadium. However, an intense immersive feeling may be created with 3D images
projected through high resolution 3D monitors surrounding the observer. Also, the
cameras can be made to follow the head movement. Additionally, techniques are
available for sensing the movement of the hands and the fingers of the person operating
the system, which is useful in initiating actions, as in video games. However, a highly
immersive experience would call for a system that completely envelops the user with all
the stimuli necessary to feel his/ her real presence in a remote site. Also, there ought to
be some physical means and tools so that the virtual hands can actually touch and
handle the things at site.
The talk introduces Telepresence as a technology for remote handling operations. The
first part of the talk describes the concept and presents the recent experiments on this in
BARC. The second part attempts to give a glimpse of the technology behind it and the
challenges in its implementation.

Telepresence:
operations

Empowering a robot for remote handling and rescue

This technique can be effectively used in handling emergency situations when direct
human intervention is either risky or impossible. A robotic arm that virtually acts as a real
arm of the operator is required for this situation.
Nuclear industry has been using Master-slave Manipulators since 1950s, in which a
mechanical master arm is coupled to an identical slave arm with a thick concrete shield
between them. This equipment is indispensible for handling radioactive materials. In this
equipment, the motions are generated by the human hand and transmitted through wire
ropes, tapes and pulleys. In master-slave manipulators, due to their mechanical linkages,
master and slave arms cannot be farther than three to four meters from each other.
Moreover, they are rigidly fixed at one place and could not be deployed in emergency.
Despite this, they are still widely used in handling radioactive substances. Due to the
direct mechanical linkages, any contact between the object and the slave could be felt at
the master arm. The motions are also directly controlled by human arm so there are no
control stability issues. This machine can well said to be the precursor of robotic arms of
today and one can see that the wrist and gripper design closely match the master-slave
manipulators structure..
With the advent of robotic arms that use electric motors and computers, automatic
assembly lines started using robotic manipulators for repetitive tasks. The incentive for
their use was essentially reduction of manpower and increase in the productivity as these

robotic arms could work nonstop. Some precise, demanding and unpleasant tasks such
as spray painting and welding were also expertly done using robotic arms in large
factories. Thus the robots were finally out of the laboratories and made their presence
felt in the society, raising the public expectations. It is now naturally expected that in any
disaster, a robotic team would save the day. It is also obvious that the robots need to
work in master-slave mode so that unknown challenges could be tackled by the human
operator in closed loop. Robotic surgery also uses master-slave mode of operation with
master arm and slave arm coupled electronically

Telepresence technology in BARC: The Engineering aspects

The human arm, complemented with a dexterous palm and fingers is very deft at
handling objects and executing complicated manoeuvres. A robot with the capabilities of
executing a human arms gesticulation online could be suitable in tackling unknown
operations. A human operator equipped with video, audio, force feedback and a suitable
arm motion controller, can feel and act as if he/she were present at the remote site in
person.
A robotic arm can only perform a small percentage of such motions. Further, human brain
extensively uses force and contact senses to handle and manipulate objects. That is the
reason why it is so difficult to do ordinary task with cold and numb hands. If the sense of
touch is missing, the operator would find it very difficult to handle the situation with
perfection. The interaction of the robot arm with its surrounding needs to be sensed by a
force sensor and it is again converted back to force using haptic devices at the operators
console.
The coupling between the human operator and robotic arm can either be strong, the
remote control loop may be effectively closed by the operator; or be weak, where
predefined commands are sent by the operator to the robot. As pointed out, the robot
arm cannot fully imitate the human arms motions; therefore some of the tasks can be
delegated to the robot using predefined commands. For example, insertion of a peg in a
hole can be executed by the robot autonomously using its force sensor in local loop. It
may be futile to transmit the force data to the operator for guiding the peg, because the
force first needs to be felt by the operator using a haptic device, which might not only
delay the response but actually reproduce incorrect force direction depending on its
instantaneous pose.
Before a decision to handle any object is made, it is necessary that the scene is observed
as a person physically present there would do. This requirement is difficult to meet. Apart
from 3D image that we can see through our eyes, the eyes keep moving rapidly to
capture multiple views, not to speak of head and body motions that we take for granted.
Although the camera pairs mounted on roll-pitch-yaw motorised pedestals can show
views from certain angles, it would not match the operators body posture and thus
creating confusion in operators mind. We found that it was easier to work using fixed
large view of the workspace rather than continuously moving/ shaking view of the
workspace which induces dizziness.

A challenge: Developing a fully integrated embedded Telepresence

system
A technology that is meant for emergency or some hazardous routine work must be
reliable and deployable at shortest possible time. As the system is composed of multiple
technologies and modules, maintaining compatibility among each module during its
assigned period of operation is a challenging task. As the technology evolves, old devices
cease to exist and better devices replace them. More than often the new devices are not

backward compatible and a cascading effect forces us to replace many of the working
modules. It is better to design a single board solution composed of firmware exclusively
designed for Telepresence technology. This board could process all the computations in
embedded software and no PC would be required.

Conclusion
Telepresence is necessary for using robots in unstructured environment. It may be
indispensible in disaster management in future and save many lives. It is however
advisable to start using it in some of the routine situations like hospitals, banks, library in
carrying papers or handling chemicals. This technology can be further developed only if it
is routinely used in nearby locations. Otherwise neither robots and nor their human
masters would be found ready in emergency.