Avoiding conflicts of operators in multi-user teleoperation systems

In this paper, control methods to avoid the conflict of operators´ commands in multi-user teleoperation system is considered. The proposed methods insert virtual nonlinear springs between the master arms and the end of wave transmission line of the multilateral controller. The nonlinear springs becomes softer when the input force from the operators are above a certain threshold and limit the input force. Experiments are conducted in order to compare the effectiveness of the methods. The experimental results show that the proposed two-step gain improves the operation performance.