Passive coordination control of nonlinear bilateral teleoperated manipulators

Abstract

In this paper, a teleoperation controller is proposed for a pair of nonlinear master and slave manipulators. The control law enables the nonlinear robots to be perfectly coordinated despite arbitrary environment and human forcings, while ensuring that the closed loop teleoperator system is passive with respect to a supply rate that includes a user specified bilateral power scaling factor. After perfect coordination has been attained, the control law constrains n degrees of freedom (DOF). The dynamics of the remaining n degrees of freedom resembles those of a usual rigid robot. Thus, the teleoperator becomes a common rigid mechanical tool with which both the human operator and the physical environment interact.