Transparency performance improvement for bilateral teleoperation with direct force-feedback control

This paper addresses the performance improvement of force feedback in bilateral teleoperation with a new direct force-feedback controller. To make the human operator feel the environment before touching the object, a designed force is added to the master robot. The master velocity signal and the distance signal between the slave robot and the object are all embedded in the designed force function. The communication delays are assumed to be both time-varying and asymmetrical, which is the case for network-based teleoperation systems. The stability conditions are presented for the teleoperation systems. Finally, the simulations are performed and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.