Explicit time-delay compensation in teleoperation: An adaptive control approach

This paper proposes a control framework that addresses the destabilizing effect of communication time delays and system uncertainties in telerobotics, in the presence of force feedback. Force feedback is necessary to obtain transparency, which is providing the human operator as close a feel as possible of the environment where the slave robot is operating. Achieving stability and providing transparency are conflicting goals. This is the major reason why, currently, a very few, if at all, fully operational force feedback teleoperation devices exist except for research environments. The proposed framework handles system uncertainty with adaptation and communication time delays with explicit delay compensation. The technology that allows this explicit adaptive time-delay compensation is inspired by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Adaptive Posicast Controller. We provide simulation results that demonstrate stable explicit adaptive delay compensation in a force-reflecting teleoperation set up. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.