Survey of commercial manual controllers for a generic telerobotics architecture

The purpose of this study was to determine an input device for the Air Force's generic telerobotics architecture for large aircraft maintenance and repair. Our area of concern was the human to machine interface, more specifically, which manual controller or input device should be used for the specified tasks in this architecture. We mailed a survey to 68 companies in order to compile a list of possible input devices that the telerobotics architecture could use. Thirty two companies responded giving us enough data to generate a list that described the physical traits of the input devices. The physical traits were divided into two main categories. The first category, called device category, deals with items such as external power, type of communication interface, and the number of degrees of freedom. The second category called user category, discusses items such as cost, size, weight and dexterity. We then divided the required tasks that the Air Force's generic telerobotics architecture must perform into actions and analyzed them to generate a list of traits required by an input device. Both the task analysis and device listings were combined mathematically to form a performance table which compared the input devices that could perform each individual action.