A Study on the L2 Stability and Transparency of Three Channel Control Architectures in Bilateral Teleoperation under Time Delays

Abstract

Bilateral/haptic teleoperation is the remote control of a "slave" robotic system through a "master" robot or haptic interface, and involves the feedback of the slave interaction forces to the operator. Thus, the master operator can operate the slave as an extension of his/her body. Time delay among the robots is a long-standing problem in bilateral teleoperation. The existence of force feedback to the operator in haptic/bilateral teleoperation makes the teleoperation system less robust to time delays on the communication channels. Three channel architectures have been proposed in the literature to provide increased robustness against time delays with increased transparency (kinesthetic coupling). In this paper, we propose modifications on three channel architectures to guarantee delay independent L2 stability, while exploiting the increased transparency characteristics of these architectures. The validity of the proposed approach is examined both analytically and experimentally on a bilateral teleoperation system.