Shadow Robot & Polhemus

Shadow Robot Teleoperation System and Polhemus Tracking

Robots are often viewed as less dexterous than humans, they may be more precise in some scenarios but they lack the human levels of dexterity that are so difficult to replicate.

We at Shadow Robot have been developing our Teleoperation System to allow robots to have just that, human levels of dexterity.

To achieve this, one needs an effective way of tracking the arms, hands, and fingers. There are solutions that involve cameras tracking the movements, but these often suffer from the line of sight occlusion issues, which can make the tracking less precise. Another solution involves sensors, but these are often either not precise with low fidelity, or too big and bulky to put on a glove.

Therefore when assessing motion tracking technologies for integration with our Teleoperation System, and Shadow Dexterous Hands, we faced three main challenges:

1. Requirements for high-fidelity tracking with low latency
2. Line-of-sight occlusions
3. Sensor size

The solution to our problem – Polhemus

Shadow Robot Company, has included Polhemus tracking solution in our Teleoperation System, and Shadow Dexterous Hands.

Polhemus is the global leader in high-fidelity motion measurement. They have been helping customers break new ground with best-in-class 6DOF electromagnetic tracking and digitizing systems for over 50 years. Polhemus products are widely used in such areas as medical applications, university research, and robotics applications, including robotics surgery, training and simulation, computer-aided design, virtual and augmented reality, and more.

Polhemus provided us with the key, next-generation features needed to take our product to the next level including real-time tracking, enabling finger pivoting, finger sliding and finger gaiting, and independent side-to-side finger movement.