Passive position error correction in Internet-based teleoperation

During the last two decades, important advances have been made in the field of bilateral teleoperation. Different techniques for performing stable teleoperation in non-ideal conditions have been developed, especially in a passivity framework. Until recently, however, no robust solutions for addressing this problem with variable delays and other drawbacks of packet-switched networks have been developed. The requirement of maintaining passivity in these circumstances degrades performance, due to the loss of energy that it involves. In this paper an arrangement is proposed which is capable of eliminating position errors, while maintaining passivity of an Internet-like channel. The behaviour of this new controller is studied by Lyapunov analysis, compared to previous methods, and validated through numerical simulations.