Task-space bilateral teleoperation systems for heterogeneous robots with time-varying delays

SUMMARYThis paper proposes control algorithms for heterogeneous teleoperation systems to guarantee stability and tracking performance in the presence of time-varying communication delays. Because robotic manipulators, in most applications of bilateral teleoperation systems, interact with a human operator and remote environment on the end-effector, the control system is developed in the task-space. When the dynamic parameters of the robots are unknown and the communication network is subject to time-varying delay, the developed controller can ensure stability and task-space position tracking. Additionally, if the robotic systems are influenced by human and environmental forces, the presented teleoperation control system is demonstrated to be stable and all signals are proven to be ultimately bounded. By employing the redundancy of the slave robot for sub-task control, the proposed teleoperation system can autonomously achieve additional missions in the remote environment. Numerical examples utilizing a redundant planar robot are addressed to validate the proposed task-space teleoperators with time-varying delay.