With the advancements in medicine and welfare systems, the average life span of modern human beings is expanding, creating a new market for elderly care and assistive technology. Along with the development of assistive devices based on traditional aids such as voice-readers, electronic wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs, a robotic platform is one of the most suitable platforms for providing multi-purpose assistance in human life. This research focuses on the transference of environmental perception to a human user through the use of interactive multi-modal feedback and an assistive robotic platform. A novel framework for haptic telepresence is presented to solve the problem, and state-of-the-art methodologies from computer vision, haptics, and robotics are utilized. The objective of this research is to design a framework that achieves the following: 1) This framework integrates visual perception from heterogeneous vision sensors, 2) it enables real-time interactive haptic representation of the real world through a mobile manipulation robotic platform and a haptic interface, and 3) it achieves haptic fusion of multiple sensory modalities from the robotic platform and provides interactive feedback to the human user. Specifically, a set of multi-disciplinary algorithms such as stereo-vision processes, three-dimensional (3D) map-building algorithms, and virtual-proxy based haptic volume representation processes will be integrated into a unified framework to successfully accomplish the goal. The application area of this work is focused on, but not limited to, assisting people with visual impairment with a robotic platform by providing multi-modal feedback of the environment.

This work is to investigate the performance of two Kalman Filter Algorithms, namely Linear Kalman Filter and Extended Kalman Filter on control-based human motion prediction in a real-time teleoperation. The Kalman Filter Algorithm has been widely used in research areas of motion tracking and GPS-navigation. However, the potential of human motion prediction by utilizing this algorithm is rarely being mentioned. Combine with the known issue - the delay issue in today’s teleoperation services, the author decided to build a prototype of simple teleoperation model based on the Kalman Filter Algorithm with the aim of eliminated the unsynchronization between the user’s inputs and the visual frames, where all the data were transferred over the network. In the first part of the thesis, two types of Kalman Filter Algorithm are applied on the prototype to predict the movement of the robotic arm based on the user’s motion applied on a Haptic Device. The comparisons in performance among the Kalman Filters have also been focused. In the second part, the thesis focuses on optimizing the motion prediction which based on the results of Kalman filtering by using the smoothing algorithm. The last part of the thesis examines the limitation of the prototype, such as how much the delays are accepted and how fast the movement speed of the Phantom Haptic can be, to still be able to obtain reasonable predations with acceptable error rate.   The results show that the Extended Kalman Filter has achieved more advantages in motion prediction than the Linear Kalman Filter during the experiments. The unsynchronization issue has been effectively improved by applying the Kalman Filter Algorithm on both state and measurement models when the latency is set to below 200 milliseconds. The additional smoothing algorithm further increases the accuracy. More important, it also solves shaking issue on the visual frames on robotic arm which is caused by the wavy property of the Kalman Filter Algorithm. Furthermore, the optimization method effectively synchronizes the timing when robotic arm touches the interactable object in the prediction.   The method which is utilized in this research can be a good reference for the future researches in control-based human motion tracking and prediction. / Detta arbete fokuserar på att undersöka prestandan hos två Kalman Filter Algoritmer, nämligen Linear Kalman Filter och Extended Kalman Filter som används i realtids uppskattningar av kontrollbaserad mänsklig rörelse i teleoperationen. Dessa Kalman Filter Algoritmer har används i stor utsträckning forskningsområden i rörelsespårning och GPS-navigering. Emellertid är potentialen i uppskattning av mänsklig rörelse genom att utnyttja denna algoritm sällan nämnas. Genom att kombinera med det kända problemet – fördröjningsproblem i dagens teleoperation tjänster beslutar författaren att bygga en prototyp av en enkel teleoperation modell vilket är baserad på Kalman Filter algoritmen i syftet att eliminera icke-synkronisering mellan användarens inmatningssignaler och visuella information, där alla data överfördes via nätverket. I den första delen av avhandlingen appliceras både Kalman Filter Algoritmer på prototypen för att uppskatta rörelsen av robotarmen baserat på användarens rörelse som anbringas på en haptik enhet. Jämförelserna i prestandan bland de Kalman Filter Algoritmerna har också fokuserats. I den andra delen fokuserar avhandlingen på att optimera uppskattningar av rörelsen som baserat på resultaten av Kalman-filtrering med hjälp av en utjämningsalgoritm. Den sista delen av avhandlingen undersökes begräsning av prototypen, som till exempel hur mycket fördröjningar accepteras och hur snabbt den haptik enheten kan vara, för att kunna erhålla skäliga uppskattningar med acceptabel felfrekvens.   Resultaten visar att den Extended Kalman Filter har bättre prestandan i rörelse uppskattningarna än den Linear Kalman Filter under experimenten. Det icke-synkroniseringsproblemet har förbättrats genom att tillämpa de Kalman Filter Algoritmerna på både statliga och värderingsmodeller när latensen är inställd på under 200 millisekunder. Den extra utjämningsalgoritmen ökar ytterligare noggrannheten. Denna algoritm löser också det skakande problem hos de visuella bilder på robotarmen som orsakas av den vågiga egenskapen hos Kalman Filter Algoritmen. Dessutom effektivt synkroniserar den optimeringsmetoden tidpunkten när robotarmen berör objekten i uppskattningarna.   Den metod som används i denna forskning kan vara en god referens för framtida undersökningar i kontrollbaserad rörelse- spåning och uppskattning.