Cooperative teleoperation control with projective force mappings

The performance objectives of multiple-master/single-slave cooperative teleoperation systems typically involve shared control where each master device controls the same degrees of freedom of the slave manipulator. In this paper, the transparency objectives for multi-master/single-slave teleoperation systems are generalized to include projected force mappings. These mappings can divide the control of the slave robot in arbitrarily defined task subspaces among the master devices. Constraint type forces are reflected to the operator(s) consistent with such task division. A provably stable adaptive controller is presented to facilitate the new projected force mappings. Experiments with a planar 3DOF dual-master/single-slave teleoperation system are provided to demonstrate the operation of the proposed cooperation teleoperation control strategy.