Loop Shaping for Transparency and Stability Robustness in Bilateral Telemanipulation

This paper presents and experimentally demonstrates a control methodology that provides transparency and stability robustness in bilateral telemanipulator systems. The approach is based upon a previously published method that structures the human-manipulators-environment system in a manner that enables the application of frequency-domain loop-shaping methods. This paper reformulates the human-manipulator interaction described in the previously published work, and experimentally demonstrates the approach on a single degree-of-freedom telemanipulation system. Experimental measurements indicate significant improvements offered by the method in both the stability robustness and transparency of the human-manipulators-environment system. Finally, experimental results are presented that demonstrate the robustness in the transparency to significant changes in the environment dynamics.