Realisation of a bilaterally teleoperated robotic vehicle platform with passivity control

In this study, a new bilateral teleoperated vehicle testing platform is proposed. In the platform, the authors apply a new power-based time domain passivity control (PTDPC) method in an effort to improve the transparency. A new bilateral teleoperation platform is realised where steering angle commands were transmitted from a steering wheel interface to a remote vehicle, and road surface forces are sent back from the vehicle to the steering wheel interface. The communication channel between the steering wheel (master side) and the remote vehicle (slave side) introduces time-varying delays in the transmitted signals. To ensure the stability of the whole system, PTDPCs are applied to each side of the communication channel, which further improve the tracking performance as well as reduce the overall effort required of the human operator. The alternative advantage of the passivity control is the simplicity: the dynamic models of both master and slave side systems are not required to be known. The algorithms, hardware and software realisations are described thoroughly in the study. Finally, experimental results are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach as well as the functionality of the new testing platform.