An adaptive observer-based controller design for time-delay teleoperation with uncertainty in environment and parameters

In this paper, the control of time-delay bilateral teleoperation systems is considered. Control complexity of such systems arises due to the nonlinear and uncertain dynamics of the system as well as the latency in data communication between the master and slave sides. Hence, a novel control scheme is proposed in this paper which improves both stability and transparency of the system despite the above mentioned limitations. The proposed controller is composed of two control loops. First, a local Lyapunov-based adaptive controller is applied (in both master and slave sides) to cancel system nonlinearities. Subsequently, a new observer-based controller scheme is proposed to achieve the stability and performance (transparency) objectives. Using the Lyapunov techniques, stability and performance objectives are cast as some Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) feasibility conditions. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the enhanced performance of the proposed controller methodology.