Representation of the Joystick Using the Virtual Configuration

Recently, facilities that are a foundation of industries such as roads, water pipes, and tunnels are getting old. Along with this, the demand on inspection in the decrepit facilities is increasing. The robots are introduced to inspection in these facilities. It is required that the operators can control the robots easily when facilities are inspected using the robots. However, the control device which the operators can operate the robots easily is different depending on the robots which are controlled and the inspection task. Therefore, a control device which enables us to control various robots is developed by us. The device can represent various operation manners by changing the shape. In this paper, a method of device control with a virtual configuration is described. A joystick is represented using the virtual configuration. The torques to be outputted to each joint of the joystick are calculated using the forces and moments which applied to the grip of the device by the operators. The calculated forces and torques are distributed to the torques which drive each joint in the device. Therefore, the joystick using the virtual configuration is represented. The usability of the proposed method is shown by verification experiments.