Maneuverability of Master-Slave Telemanipulation Systems

Maneuverability of master-slave telemanipulation systems is difficult to evaluate exactly, since it seems an intuitive sense for human operators. However, if we could not evaluate the system performance quantitatively, it would be impossible to decide what kind of master-slave system is desirable and also impossible to compare the performance among the several control schemes. In this paper, we propose a way to evaluate the maneuverability of master-slave telemanipulation systems. We first analyze an one degree-of-freedom system considering the operator and object dynamics. Secondly, we define some ideal responses of master-slave system and derive the conditions to achieve these responses. Lastly, a quantitative performance index is given in order to evaluate the maneuverability of the system. This index examines how close the actual response is to the ideal one. A numerical example is shown where three conventional control schemes are evaluated by the proposed performance index.