A new control scheme for bilateral teleoperating systems: Lyapunov stability analysis

The authors investigate the Lyapunov stability property of a control scheme for the bilateral master-slave teleoperator, first introduced by the authors in 1990. Given the nominal models of the master and slave dynamics, and using an approximate feedback linearization control, based on the earlier work of M.W. Spong and M. Vidyasagar (1987), it is shown that Lyapunov stability can be obtained under the assumption that the deviation of the model from the true system satisfies certain norm inequalities. From these norm inequalities, it is shown that the tracking error (position/velocity and force/torque) is bounded and that sufficient conditions for Lyapunov stability can be achieved. The control scheme is illustrated using the simulation of a 30-degree-of-freedom master-slave teleoperator, and the results are presented