Transparent bilateral control for time-delayed teleoperation by state convergence

This paper presents a new bilateral control scheme for time-delayed teleoperation designed to achieve transparency. The control scheme allows that the slave follows the master in spite of the time delay, ant that the force displayed to the operator was exactly the reaction force from the environment. In addition, the interaction force of the slave with the environment is adapted to the master/slave ratio when it is reflected to the operator, improving the transparency of the system. The bilateral control scheme can be used in contact situations or non-contact situations of the slave with the environment. Together with the control scheme, the paper describes an analytical design method that allows the obtaining of the control gains.