Haptic Feedback: Controlling Robots with Touch

Team 74:
Nate Delgado
Connor Bailey

Executive Summary

Our project investigates the use of haptic technology in conjunction with modern robotics to make it easier for robots to aid people in dangerous situations. For our project we used the Python programming language to create a virtual environment and a virtual robot. We conducted tests in this Python program that determined whether haptic technology would help or hinder robots used in dangerous situations and to what degree they did that. Two tests were created to determine that. The first test focused on the quality of the haptic technology versus the quality of the regular visual feedback of modern robots. The second test determined the speed at which the haptics technology robot would perform as opposed to the visual technology robot. What we discovered from the results of the quality test was that haptic feedback technology greatly increases the ease of use of robots in dangerous situations. All of the tests we conducted showed that the knowledge of temperature being readily available to the user greatly helps the operator avoid the danger zones in this type of situation. We discovered, through doing the speed tests, that haptic technology greatly increases the speed at which the robot can successfully locate the target. Speed can be very important when working with robots in dangerous situations as many times peoples’ lives are on the line. Sometimes the faster the robot can complete its task, the greater chance it might have to rescue people and save more lives because of the increased speed of the haptics technology.