Effects of Varying Mass on Wave Reflections during Wave Variable Teleoperation

The wave variable method allows for stable bilateral teleoperation in the presence of time delay. However, the appearance of transient oscillations, known as wave reflections, affect teleoperation performance when using the wave variable method. The frequency characteristics of these wave reflections have been previously considered to be primarily related to the time delay across the communication channel. In this paper we show that the frequency characteristics of wave reflections are also affected by changes to the mass of the teleoperated system. We propose a wave-variable-based controller that diminishes the effects of wave reflections as the slave dynamics changes during teleoperation. Simulation results using our proposed method is compared to the traditional wave variable method.