Bilateral Teleoperation of Multiple Mobile Agents: Coordinated Motion and Collision Avoidance

This paper presents theoretical and experimental results on bilateral teleoperation of multiple mobile slave agents coupled to a single master robot. We first design a passifying proportional-derivative (PD) controller to enforce motion tracking and formation control of master and slave vehicles under constant, bounded communication delays. Then, we incorporate avoidance functions to guarantee collision-free transit through obstructed spaces. The unified control framework is validated by experiments with two coaxial helicopters as slave agents and a haptic device as the master robot.