Trilateral Teleoperation System Research Articles

Adaptive Control for Dual-Master/Single-Slave Nonlinear Teleoperation Systems With Time-Varying Communication Delays

In this article, two types of new control strategies are proposed with respect to dual-master/single-slave trilateral teleoperation systems in the presence of symmetrical and unsymmetrical time-varying communication delay, respectively. First, the problems of stability and expected position coordination of trilateral teleoperation system are solved on the basis of controller design of bilateral teleoperation system. Second, some impedance features of interaction forces between human and dual-master as well as single-slave and remote environment are measured by adaptive control strategies. Adaptive control methods are also used to deal with the problem that is relevant to gravities loading of dual-master and single-slave manipulators. Furthermore, the stability of trilateral teleoperation systems under the symmetrical and unsymmetrical time-varying communication delay is analyzed through constructing suitable delay-dependent Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of proposed control strategies.

Multilateral Teleoperation Over Communication Time Delay Using the Time-Domain Passivity Approach

A general framework to stabilize multilateral teleoperation system over a communication time delay based on the well-known time-domain passivity approach (TDPA) is proposed. The uniqueness of this framework is that it is independent of the amount of communication time delay, the multilateral control architecture, and the number of masters and slaves. The multilateral system was first decoupled into subsystems with respect to each terminal by identifying the input signals’ contributions to the output terminals, which was not straightforward due to the coupled nature of the multilateral teleoperation system. The decoupled subsystems were then converted into an electrical circuit using a mechanical–electrical analogy. Time-delay power network (TDPN) was introduced to clarify active energy sources from the time delay and passivity observer/passivity controller (PO/PC) was utilized to dissipate those active energies. A less-conservative method compared with prior work was proposed to guarantee the stability. Experiments with a trilateral teleoperation system and with a multilateral teleoperation system with a dual master and dual slave were conducted to validate the proposed framework.

Teleoperación Trilateral con Retardo de un Robot Móvil

Este artículo analiza la estabilidad de un sistema de teleoperación trilateral de un robot móvil. La dinámica de dos manipuladores maestros de estructura similar y un robot móvil, asimismo se tienen en cuenta retrasos variables en el tiempo y asimétricos. Un conjunto de controladores P + D se incluyen en el sistema de teleoperación con retardo. A partir del análisis realizado, se propone un procedimiento para establecer los parámetros de control con el fin de asegurar la estabilidad del sistema. Finalmente, el resultado teórico es verificado en la práctica por medio de pruebas sobre el sistema de teleoperación trilateral con retardo donde dos operadores humanos en colaboración y simultáneamente para conducen en un simulador 3D un robot móvil para alcanzar una tarea establecida en un entorno remoto.

Stable Nonlinear Trilateral Impedance Control for Dual-User Haptic Teleoperation Systems With Communication Delays

A new nonlinear adaptive impedance-based trilateral controller is proposed to ensure the absolute stability of multi-degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) dual-user haptic teleoperation systems subjected to communication delays. Using this strategy, reference impedance models are realized for the trilateral teleoperation system represented by a three-port network to facilitate cooperation of two human operators in order to perform a remote physical task. For this purpose, an impedance model defines the desired haptic interaction between the two human operators, while another impedance model specifies the desired behavior of the slave robot in terms of tracking the mater robots' trajectories during interaction with the remote environment. It is shown that different performance goals such as position synchronization and force reflection can be achieved via different adjustments to the impedance parameters. The sufficient conditions for the trilateral haptic system's absolute stability are investigated in terms of the impedance models' parameters. Accordingly, guidelines for modification of the impedance parameters are obtained to guarantee the absolute stability of the trilateral haptic system in the presence of communication time delays. A trilateral nonlinear version of the model reference adaptive impedance control (MRAIC) scheme is developed for implementing the proposed reference impedance models on the masters and the slave. The convergence of robots' trajectories to desired responses and the robustness against modeling uncertainties are ensured using the proposed controller as proven by the Lyapunov stability theorem. The proposed impedance-based control strategy is evaluated experimentally by employing a nonlinear multi-DOFs teleoperated trilateral haptic system with and without communication delays.

Dual-user nonlinear teleoperation subjected to varying time delay and bounded inputs

A novel trilateral control architecture for Dual-master/Single-slave teleoperation system with taking account of saturation in actuators, nonlinear dynamics for telemanipulators and bounded varying time delay which affects the transmitted signals in the communication channels, is proposed in this paper. In this research, we will address the stability and desired position coordination problem of trilateral teleoperation system by extension of (nP+D) controller that is used for Single-master/Single-slave teleoperation system. Our proposed controller is weighted summation of nonlinear Proportional plus Damping (nP+D) controller that incorporate gravity compensation and the weights are specified by the dominance factor, which determines the supremacy of each user over the slave robot and over the other user. The asymptotic stability of closed loop dynamics is studied using Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional under conditions on the controller parameters, the actuator saturation characteristics and the maximum values of varying time delays. It is shown that these controllers satisfy the desired position coordination problem in free motion condition. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, a number of simulations have been conducted on a varying time delay Dual-master/Single-slave teleoperation system using 3-DOF planar robots for each telemanipulator subjected to actuator saturation.

Delayed Trilateral Teleoperation of a Mobile Robot

This paper analyzes the stability of a trilateral teleoperation system of a mobile robot. This type of system is nonlinear, time-varying, and delayed and includes a master-slave kinematic dissimilarity. To close the control loop, three P+d controllers are used under a position master/slave velocity strategy. The stability analysis is based on Lyapunov-Krasovskii theory where a functional is proposed and analyzed to get conditions for the control parameters that assure a stable behavior, keeping the synchronism errors bounded. Finally, the theoretical result is verified in practice by means of a simple test, where two human operators both collaboratively and simultaneously drive a 3D simulator of a mobile robot to achieve an established task on a remote shared environment.

Nonlinear trilateral teleoperation stability analysis subjected to time-varying delays

A trilateral teleoperation system facilitates the collaboration of two users to share control of a single robot in a remote environment. While various applications of shared-control trilateral haptic teleoperation systems have recently emerged, they have mostly been studied in the context of single-DOF, LTI robotic systems. On the other hand, robotic manipulators with multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) and therefore nonlinear dynamics have recently found many applications such as in robotic-assisted surgery and therapy, space exploration and navigation systems. In this paper, considering the full nonlinear dynamical models of multi-DOF robots, stability analysis of a dual-user haptic teleoperation system is considered over a communication network subjected to asymmetrical time varying delays and through a dominance factor suitable for trainer–trainee applications. Stability in free motion and contact motion and asymptotic position tracking of the trilateral haptic teleoperation system in free motion are proven via Lyapunov stability analysis and Barbalat's lemma where operators and the environment are assumed to be passive. Simulation and experimental results concerning robot position tracking and user-perceived forces for three 2-DOF robots and experimental analysis of user-perceived stiffnesses for three 3-DOF robots validate the theoretical findings pertaining to the system stability and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed controller.

Stability Control of Force-Reflected Nonlinear Multilateral Teleoperation System under Time-Varying Delays

A novel control algorithm based on the modified wave-variable controllers is proposed to achieve accurate position synchronization and reasonable force tracking of the nonlinear single-master-multiple-slave teleoperation system and simultaneously guarantee overall system’s stability in the presence of large time-varying delays. The system stability in different scenarios of human and environment situations has been analyzed. The proposed method is validated through experimental work based on the 3-DOF trilateral teleoperation system consisting of three different manipulators. The experimental results clearly demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed algorithm to achieve high transparency and robust stability in nonlinear single-master-multiple-slave teleoperation system in the presence of time-varying delays.

Trilateral Teleoperation of Adaptive Fuzzy Force/Motion Control for Nonlinear Teleoperators With Communication Random Delays

In this paper, an adaptive fuzzy control scheme is proposed for hybrid motion/force of trilateral teleoperation systems with a dual-master-single-slave configuration under stochastic time-varying delays in communication channels. Different from previous works on bilateral teleoperation systems, this paper addresses dual-master trilateral control of a single holonomic-constrained robotic manipulator, where the communication delays are modeled as multiple Markov chains, and the motion/force controls are investigated under consideration of unsymmetric stochastic time-varying delays and system dynamical uncertainties. Using partial feedback linearization, the whole trilateral teleoperation system, which consists of both master and slave manipulator dynamics, is transformed into three subsystems. By integrating Markov jump systems to handle random delays, adaptive fuzzy control strategies are developed for the nonlinear teleoperators with modeling uncertainties and external disturbances by using the approximation property of the fuzzy logic systems (FLSs). It is proven that the trilateral teleoperation system is stochastically stable in mean square under specific linear matrix inequality (LMI) conditions, and all the signals of the resulting closed-loop system are uniformly bounded. The proposed scheme is validated by extensive simulations.

3-DOF Trilateral Teleoperation Using A Pair of 1-DOF and 2-DOF Haptic Devices: Stability Analysis

Abstract Humans are usually better than autonomous robots in operating in complex environments. In bilateral teleoperation, to take full advantage of the human's intelligence, experience, and sensory inputs for performing a dexterous task, a possibility is to use the two hands of the user to manipulate two master haptic devices in order to control a slave robot with multiple degrees-of-freedom (DOF); the total DOFs of the two masters are equal to the DOFs of the slave. In this paper, two 1-DOF and 2-DOF haptic robots are considered as the two masters while a 3-DOF robot acts as the slave in a trilateral teleoperation system. It is discussed how such a system can result in better task performance by splitting the various DOFs of a dexterous task between two hands or two users, e.g., during peg-in-the-hole insertion. The stability analysis of such a system is not trivial due to dynamic coupling across the different DOFs of the robots, the human operators, and the physical/virtual environments. Also, the unknown dynamics of the users and the environments exacerbate the problem. We present a novel, straightforward and convenient method for stability analysis of this teleoperation system. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the approach.