Enhanced Haptic Passivity and Uncoupled Stability with Tustin-like General Discretization Method

Abstract

The stability of haptic simulation systems has been studied for a safer interaction with virtual environments. In this work, the passivity and uncoupled stability of such systems are analyzed when a viscoelastic virtual environment is implemented using a two-parameter Tustin-like general discretization method that can also represent methods such as backward difference, Tustin, and zero-order-hold. Aiming at expanding the virtual environment dynamic range, it is shown that by tuning the parameters for a customized discretization method, the virtual environment dynamic range will supersede the ranges offered by methods such as backward difference, Tustin and zero-order-hold. The proposed discretization method is numerically and experimentally evaluated.