Collaborative Teleoperation with Haptic Feedback for Collision-Free Navigation of Ground Robots

We propose a collaborative teleoperation algorithm which utilizes haptic force feedback to guide users around oncoming obstacles while accounting for non-holonomic constraints. The proposed algorithm predicts the user's goal, plans a path using a modified RRT ^* algorithm to the predicted goal, and provides haptic guidance to the path and away from obstacles when the user is in an unsafe pose. We show that the vehicle cannot collide with obstacles under the proposed algorithm following the haptic commands. We assess the per-formance of our algorithm with a virtual pilot in simulations and hardware experiments, demonstrating its ability to prevent collisions while reaching the goal location. Additionally, we demonstrate human-in-the-loop navigation with a Geomagic Touch haptic device providing force feedback to the user. These simulations and experiments show that the proposed haptic guidance system is a useful and effective tool for co-navigation of non-holonomic vehicles via teleoperation.