Small-gain design of networked cooperative bilateral teleoperators

For cooperative force-reflecting teleoperation over networks, conventional passivity-based approaches are not always applicable due to possibility of nonpassive slave-slave interactions and irregular communication delays imposed by networks. In this work, we propose a design approach that is based on an advanced version of the small-gain theorem developed previously for complex network-based interconnections. It is shown that, using the proposed design approach, a networked cooperative force-reflecting teleoperator system can be made stable in the presence of irregular communications by adjusting the local control gains appropriately. Experimental results are presented that confirm the validity of the proposed approach.