A passivity-based control strategy for nonlinear bilateral teleoperation employing estimated external forces

Teleoperation systems have been presented to handle objects in environments in which the presence of operators are impracticable, unsafe or less effective. In this paper, a passive control strategy employing the new outputs to state synchronization of the master and slave robots is developed to attain position coordination during contact tasks. The proposed control scheme includes position signals plus force signals. However, force measurement in such applications is a major limitation. Therefore, a modified force estimation algorithm is proposed to predict external forces applied on the master and slave robots. The closed-loop bilateral teleoperation system is investigated by employing Lyapunov stability criteria. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed control scheme. It is observed that, in the presence of the estimated external forces in the control scheme, the slave robot follows the master position in both free and contact motion, and force reflecting occurs properly as well. Moreover, it is verified that the external forces are estimated appropriately through the proposed force estimation algorithm.