The human interface consists of three parts: the CyberGlove® which measures the joints of the hand, the CyberGrasp® also from Immersion Corporation (formerly sold by Virtual Technologies) which applies forces to the human fingertips and an ultrasonic system tracks the operator's arm wrist position. The robot systems consists of a dexterous robot hand (Dexter) connected to an Adept 1 robot.

The CyberGlove®, is a right handed glove with 22 bend sensors measuring each of the joints of the hand. The resolution on each sensor is 0.2° to 0.8° depending on the particular joint?s range of motion. By reading only the appropriate sensors for the thumb and index finger, data collection can be run at 200 Hz. The glove is calibrated for each individual user. A predictive algorithm is used so the data appear to be continuous at 1000 Hz, and are used in robot control.

Force feedback is provided to the user's fingertips through the CyberGrasp® mechanism, a cable driven device designed for use with the CyberGlove. A set of motors, worn in a backpack, apply tension to cables in teflon sheaths, which in turn apply forces to each finger. The forces applied to the finger are unipolar, since the cable can only pull along a single axis, and are grounded to the back of the hand, so no forces restrain arm motion. The motors can apply force up to 12 N and are updated at 1000 Hz to appear smooth and continuous to the user. The system has a resonance in the range of 20 Hz and a cutoff frequency on the order of 40 Hz.

The motion of the user's arm is measured by a six degree of freedom ultrsonic tracking system. The system has a positional resolution of 0.1mm and an angular resolution of 0.1 degree. Accuracy is 2% of the distance from the transmitter. Tracking space is approximately a 2.3 m long 100 degree cone. The tracking information is updated at 50 Hz and then transformed and filter before being send to the Adept robot via an ethernet connection.

Attached to the Adept robotic arm is, Dexter, a two-fingered robotic hand, with two degrees of freedom per finger. The motors are fairly small, due to weight and space limitations, but are still capable of providing enough force at the fingertips to pick up a 250g object, such as a softball, which more than suffices for the purpose of these experiments. The links are 100 mm long, and each has over 120° of motion. The workspace of the hand is about 400 mm by 150 mm, with a positional resolution of 0.08 mm. This workspace is sized to best manipulate objects from about one to three inches in diameter. Manipulation is not limited to spherical objects; the telemanipulation tasks involve manipulation of square blocks and cylindrical objects. Two-axis strain gage force sensors have been incorporated into the robot fingertips to read the forces applied by the robot to the object. The robot hand is placed on the end of an Adept 1, a 5 DOF SCARA industrial robot arm. The Adept has a positional resolution of 0.04 mm and 0.05° in the rotational axis. The workspace is approximately 1100 mm long by 350 mm wide by 175 mm high. The robot trajectory is controlled by the Adept controller utilizing the enhanced trajectory controller (V+ ver 14).