One of the cooler courseworks I’ve done during my MSc time @UCL was the Cyclochops project. The coursework task was very open ended - write a mock paper. So I have a developed a teleoperated robot for inspection. The main idea was to see if its possible to create a haptic interface via simple servo and force sensor based admitance system.

The robot has two parts, a control station and the rover itself. The control station is made up of two “chopstick ends” and have two revolute axes. Each axis has an associated pair of force sensors located around a passive joint - in order to sense the force being applied to the tip and allow admittance:

The rover side has an identical system that can be used to sense interaction forces and translate them back into the control station to allow sense of touch remotely.