JP2637528B2 - Robot remote control device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Overview] For example, a robot existing in a remote environment such as outer space is monitored while monitoring a monitor image obtained by a camera of the robot.
A remote control device for a robot that is remotely controlled from the ground. The purpose is to enable accurate and easy remote control of the robot even when the monitor image delay is large. A monitor display device for displaying the scales while overlapping the monitor image, an operation information creation device for creating a robot operation information of a motion amount having a size corresponding to each scale of the monitor display device, and an operation information creation device. And a transmission device for transmitting the robot operation information to the robot.

[Industrial applications]

The present invention relates to a robot remote control device for remotely controlling a robot existing in a remote environment such as outer space from a ground station or the like.

In such a remote control device for a robot, it is necessary that the robot can be operated accurately and easily even when the monitor image of the robot moves with a large delay.

[Conventional technology]

With the recent space development, it has become necessary for robots to perform work in outer space where environmental conditions are severe. For example, the work includes the construction of a space station in outer space or the work of various experiments in an unmanned space station. Since these operations are operations in space that are not easily accessible by humans, robot operations are generally performed by remote control from the ground or from a space station.

During this remote operation, the movement of the robot on the space side is captured by a monitor camera, and the monitor image is transmitted to the ground in real time and displayed on a monitor TV. The operator operates the robot while watching the monitor TV. It is carried out.

[Problems to be solved by the invention]

For example, the orbit of a space station where a robot may be mounted is several hundred km high, and its orbit time is about 1 to 2 hours. For this reason, there are times when the position of the space station is on the backside of the earth with respect to the ground station, so that communication between the ground station and the space station cannot always be carried out by direct communication, and therefore, usually several geostationary satellites Communication between the ground station and the space robot is carried out by satellite communication.

In such a case, since the propagation length of the radio wave becomes longer, the radio wave propagation time also becomes longer. Moreover, since the robot operation on the ground-side device is performed while monitoring the robot operation on the monitor TV and confirming that the robot has moved as desired, the space robot requested the space robot after issuing a robot operation command from the ground-side device. It takes at least twice as long as the propagation delay between the ground-side device and the space robot before it is confirmed on the monitor television whether the movement has actually been performed. As a result, the robot cannot be operated while checking the robot operation immediately, so the operator must wait for a certain period of time to check the operation result and then perform the operation again. is not.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to enable a remote operation of a robot to be performed accurately and easily even when a delay of a monitor image is large.

[Means for Solving the Problems] FIG. 1 is an explanatory view of the principle according to the present invention.

A robot remote control device according to the present invention remotely controls a robot 105 existing in a remote environment while monitoring a monitor image captured by a camera, and a scale for visually measuring a movement amount of the robot 105. A monitor display device 101 for displaying the monitor image 104 overlapping the monitor image,
An operation information creating device 10 for creating robot operation information of a motion amount having a size corresponding to each scale of the monitor display device 101
2 and a transmission device 103 for transmitting the robot operation information from the operation information creation device 102 to the robot side.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the scale display on the monitor display device 102 is not generated by the overlap processing on the monitor display device side, but is generated by a scale display generation means provided on the camera side for photographing the robot. Is configured to be generated by

The scale display generating means may be constituted by a scale means arranged in a camera photographing area near the robot.

[Action]

The operator operates the scale 104 displayed on the monitor display device 101.
The robot 105 and the work object 106 can be referred to
Can be measured with the eye. The operation information creation device 102 creates the robot operation information using the distance measured by the eye as the movement amount of the robot, and sends the information to the robot side by the transmission device 103. Since the robot is supposed to perform the movement of the eye-measurement distance based on the robot operation information, the robot operation can be accurately performed without frequently confirming the operation result on the monitor image having a large delay amount.

〔Example〕

 Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 shows a remote control device for a robot according to one embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, the present invention is applied to a remote control system of a space robot. In the figure, the space robot side device 22 communicates the robot operation information and the monitor image signal with the ground station side device 21. The communication device 4 converts the received robot operation information into joint angle coordinate information of the robot. A coordinate conversion device, a robot manipulator that operates while driving a joint based on joint angle coordinate information,
It includes a photographing device 7 for photographing the movement of the manipulator 6 and generating a monitor image signal.

As shown in FIG. 4, the photographing device 7 includes a small camera 71 fixedly installed on the manipulator 6 so as to photograph the hand 61 of the robot manipulator 6 from above, and a hand 61.
And a small camera 72 fixedly installed on the manipulator 6 so as to photograph the image from the side.

Further, the ground station side device 21 transmits the operation information created by the operation information creation device 1 and the operation information creation device 1 for creating the operation information of the robot manipulator 6 to the robot side and receives the monitor image signal from the robot side. And a monitor display device 3 for displaying a monitor image signal received by the communication device 2.

The monitor display device 3 comprises two monitor televisions. Each monitor television has, as shown in FIG. 5, an upper photographing screen 31 of a robot hand 61 by a small camera 71 and a side view of the robot hand 61 by a small camera 72. The side shooting screen 32 is displayed. And each of these display screens
Scales 33 and 34 are displayed on the monitor images 31 and 32 by overlay processing on monitor images from the robot side.

The scales 33 and 34 are scaled so that the distance between the manipulator 6 and the work object can be measured. The display screen 31 has xy rectangular coordinates and the display screen 32 has xz rectangular coordinates. . Near the origin, the hand 61 of the manipulator 6
And the small cameras 71 and 72 are fixedly mounted, so that the position of the hand 61 in the display screens 31 and 32 is always constant.

The operation information creating apparatus 1 has dialing units 11 to 13 and dialing units 11 whose scales correspond to the display screens 31 and 32 and generate pulses proportional to the amount of rotation as shown in FIG. And counters 14 to 16 for counting the number of pulses from the counters 13 to 13 and coordinate conversion units 17 to 19 for converting the counts of the counters 14 to 16 into coordinate value information of each coordinate axis. Here, the toile input units 11 to 13 are coordinate axes
It is for adjusting the amount of movement of x, y, z. The converted coordinate values from the coordinate conversion units 17 to 19 are sent to the communication device 2 as robot operation information.

The operation of this embodiment will be described. Now, in order to work on the work object 10 with the tip 61 of the manipulator 6 of the space robot side device 22, remote control is performed by the ground station side device 21. The hand 61 and the work object 10 are displayed as images on the monitor display device 3 of the ground station-side device 21 as shown in FIG.

In this case, the operator uses the scales 33 and 34 overlaid on the display images 31 and 32 to display the hand 61 and the work object.
Most distances to 10 can be read directly by eye measurement.
Then, the operator inputs the amount of movement of the robot corresponding to the measured distance using the dial input units 11 to 13. Thus, the movement amount is converted into orthogonal coordinate values by the coordinate conversion units 17 to 19 and sent to the space robot side device 22 by the communication device 2 as operation information.

The space robot side device 22 transmits this operation information to the communication device 4
The coordinate conversion device 5 converts it into robot joint angle coordinate information, and drives the manipulator 6 based on the joint angle coordinate information.

As described above, the operator can accurately remotely control the robot by a so-called feedforward operation without waiting for the robot operation result and checking the result on the monitor television.

Various modifications are possible in implementing the present invention. For example, in the above-described embodiment, the robot operation information creation device using the dial input means is used. However, the present invention is not limited to this. For example, an operation information creation device based on a master / slave operation can be used.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing a modified example in which such a master-slave control method is used. In the figure, elements having the same reference numerals as those in FIG. 2 are elements having the same configuration as in FIG.
Master / slave control is performed by the master manipulator 81
The slave manipulator 9 moves in the same manner following the movement of the master manipulator.
By causing 81 to perform a desired operation manually or the like, the slave manipulator 9 can be remotely controlled.

In this modified example, the robot operation information creation device 8
Is a master manipulator 81, a coordinate conversion unit 82 for converting joint angle coordinate information of the master manipulator 81 into coordinate value information of a rectangular coordinate system, and a displacement amount display for digitally displaying the rectangular coordinate value information (ie, the displacement amount). The display of the displacement amount display unit 83 corresponds to the scales 33 and 34 displayed on the monitor display device 3.

Even with such a configuration, the operator measures the distance between the robot hand 61 and the work object 10 by the scale displayed on the monitor display device 3 and looks at the displacement amount display section 83 to obtain the desired displacement amount of the robot hand 61. The master manipulator 81
Can be entered.

Further, as a modified example of the present invention, the scales 33 and 34 to be displayed on the monitor display device 3 are not generated by the overlay processing in the ground station-side device 21 but are added in advance to the image signal sent from the space robot-side device 22. It can also be included. As the method, for example, a scale plate or the like is arranged in advance in the vicinity of the robot manipulator 6 and the work object 10 in a space environment, and the scale plate is photographed by the photographing device 7 together with the manipulator 6 or the like. For example, a method of providing a mechanism capable of superimposing a scale on a photographed image and photographing the photographed image itself is possible.

Furthermore, in the above embodiments, the case where the present invention is applied to a space robot has been described. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and the present invention is applied to a limited environment such as a nuclear power plant or underwater where human access is difficult. Generally applicable when remotely controlling a robot.

〔The invention's effect〕

According to the present invention, even when the delay of the monitor image is large, the remote operation of the robot can be performed accurately and easily, and the operability of the remote operation is improved.

[Brief description of the drawings]

1 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an appearance of a dial input unit in the embodiment device, and FIG. FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of an image displayed on a monitor television, FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of an image displayed on a monitor television at the time of remote operation, and FIG. It is a block diagram showing a modification. In the figure, 1,8 ... Robot operation information creation device 2,4 ... Communication device 3 ... Monitor display device 5 ... Coordinate conversion device 6 ... Robot manipulator 7 ... Imaging device 9 ... Slave manipulator 10 ... Work object 11-13 Dial input unit 14-16 Counter 17-19,82 Coordinate conversion unit 31,32 Monitor display screen 33,34 Scale 61 Manipulator hand 71,72 …… Small camera 81 …… Master manipulator 83 …… Displacement display

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-63-139689 (JP, A) Japanese Utility Model Showa-64-23389 (JP, U)

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] A robot (105) existing in a remote environment is monitored by a camera while monitoring a monitor image of the robot (105).
5) A remote control device for a robot that remotely controls a scale (104) for measuring a movement amount of the robot (105).
Monitor display device (101) for displaying an image overlapping the monitor image, and operation information creation for creating robot operation information of a motion amount having a size corresponding to each scale (104) of the monitor display device (101) A remote control device for a robot, comprising: a device (102); and a transmission device (103) for transmitting robot operation information from the operation information creation device (102) to the robot. 2. The scale display on the monitor display device (102) is generated by a scale display generating means provided on the camera side for photographing the robot, instead of being generated by the overlap processing on the monitor display device side. The remote control device for a robot according to claim 1, wherein the remote control device is configured as follows. 3. The robot remote control device according to claim 2, wherein said scale display generating means is a scale means arranged near the robot so as to be photographed by a camera.