Stability of teleoperation systems for time-varying delays by LMI techniques

This work presents a study on the stability of teloperation systems, based on recent results on Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals for time-varying delays. The teleoperation scheme chosen is the 2-channel velocity-velocity (VV) architecture. This scheme is modeled by state-space equations, which eliminate the fixed s=0 pole derived from the VV setting. A discussion on the time-varying behavior of internet delays is then presented, with a new explanation on the bounds of the delay derivatives. The main stability theorem is recalled and implemented, using LMI software, on a numerical example. Final discussions are provided regarding expected tracking capabilities and agreement of the theory and experimental results, which are satisfactory.