Stable and enhanced position-force tracking for bilateral teleoperation with time delay

Time delay in bilateral teleoperation is a challenging problem from the point of view of both system stability and transparency. Traditional wave variable based teleoperation method can theoretically guarantee system passivity with arbitrary large time delay but cannot provide good position and force tracking performance. In this paper, a novel wave variable teleoperation structure is firstly proposed which can achieve position and force tracking with only one time delay, then a predictor is utilized to further reduce the force tracking difference between master and slave side. In order to retain passivity of the whole teleoperation system, energy reservoir technique is used to constraint injected energy. Simulation studies show that the proposed structure provides stable and enhanced position and force tracking performance compared to traditional wave variable method with position tracking difference of only one time delay and even smaller force tracking delay thanks to the predictor used.