Operating manipulator arm by robot suit HAL for remote in-cell equipment maintenance

Kitamura, Akihiro   ; Namekawa, Takashi; Hiramatsu, Kosuke*; Sankai, Yoshiyuki*

A remote control system to operate manipulator arm by robot suit HAL, hybrid assisted limb, is examined for in-cell equipment maintenance application. In this integrated system operator wear exoskeletal structured HAL and movement and intention of operator are transferred through computer system to the slave type manipulator arm. The system provides position control scheme and bioelectrical signals control scheme. In order to evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of the system, we implemented remote handling experiments using mock up equipment and compared the performances of remote operation conducted by the abovementioned two schemes with that by 3D mouse control scheme. Among these three control schemes, bioelectrical signals control scheme had outperformed the others. Under the bioelectrical signals control scheme, the system achieved expected results in executing direct contact tasks of equipment maintenance with small operation time and small variation.