Nonlinear adaptive bilateral control of teleoperation systems with uncertain dynamics and kinematics

Research so far on adaptive bilateral control of master-slave teleoperation systems considers dynamic uncertainties but stops short of considering kinematic uncertainties. However, when picking up objects of unknown lengths, orientations and gripping points, the overall kinematics of a robot in the teleoperation system becomes uncertain. Therefore, new controllers are required that can guarantee the stability and motion tracking performance of the system in the presence of both dynamic and kinematic uncertainties in the master and the slave robots. In this paper, first the uncertain dynamics of the human operator and the environment are incorporated into the dynamics of the master and the slave, respectively. Then, for a teleoperation system with uncertain dynamics and kinematics, nonlinear adaptive controllers are designed for both the master and the slave. The controllers do not need exact knowledge of the dynamics of the master, the slave, the operator, or the environment, or of the kinematics of the master or the slave. The stability and position tracking convergence of the entire teleoperation system are studied. The validity of the theoretical results is verified by simulations.