Global transparency analysis of the Lawrence teleoperator architecture

Despite the frequent use of the Lawrence architecture since its introduction in the early 90´s, its global transparency characteristics have not yet been fully analyzed. That is the goal of this paper. We state and prove necessary and sufficient conditions for transparency, with special attention to the information sent across the communication layer. In particular, it is shown that transparency can be preserved even though one, and even two, communication channels are set to zero. The results may serve as a guideline for transparent teleoperator design.