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Telerobotic systems have persistently struggled to provide users with realistic force feedback; high-frequency contact transients convey important information about the remote environment but are typically attenuated to avoid the contact instability they incite. This undesirable behavior can be traced to high-frequency induced master motion, movement of the master device that is caused by force feedback rather than user intention. Such motion is interpreted as a position command to the slave, closing an internal control loop that is unstable under high gain. This paper examines the phenomenon of induced master motion in position-force teleoperation, presenting a new approach for achieving stable, high-gain force reflection using model-based cancellation. Requirements for the model of the induced motion dynamics and methods for its characterization are described, focusing on successive isolation of inertial and connecting elements. The sixth-order nonlinear model obtained for a one-degree-of-freedom user-master system is validated and then tested in a cancellation controller. Canceling high-frequency induced master motion during teleoperation is shown to improve the stability of impacts, allowing significantly higher force reflection levels and a more authentic user experience.
Kuchenbecker et al. (Sat,) studied this question.