Model predictive control for bilateral teleoperation systems with time delays

In a bilateral teleoperation system, the controller design aims at providing a faithful transmission of signals (velocities, forces) between the master and the slave manipulators to couple the operator as closely as possible to the remote task. However, when teleoperation is performed over a great distance, a transmission time delay is incurred, and it destabilizes the bilaterally controlled teleoperators. This paper considers the application of model predictive control (MPC) techniques to bilateral teleoperation systems with time delays and proposes a modified MPC scheme, which uses both the current measurement information and a correction signal reflecting the difference between the measured information and its prediction. An example is used to show that the proposed MPC method can achieve better robust properties for bilateral teleoperation systems in the presence of uncertain transmission time delays.