Transparency in time-delayed systems and the effect of local force feedback for transparent teleoperation

This paper first investigates the issue of transparency in time-delayed teleoperation. It then studies the advantages of employing local force feedback for enhanced stability and performance. In addition, two classes of three-channel control architectures, that are perfectly transparent under ideal conditions are introduced. The stability robustness of the proposed architectures to delays is rigorously analyzed, leading to certain bounds on force feedforward control parameters. Experimental results are included in support of the theoretical work.