Practical Approaches Towards Transparent and Stable Bilateral Teleoperation Under Time-Varying Network Delay

Abstract In real-life teleoperation scenarios, the presence of time-varying network delays, particularly in wireless networks, poses significant challenges in maintaining stability in a bilateral teleoperation system. Various approaches have been proposed in the past to address stability concerns; however, these often come at the expense of system transparency. Nevertheless, increasing transparency is crucial in a teleoperation system to enable precise and safe operations, as well as to provide real-time decision-making capabilities for the operator. This paper presents our comprehensive approaches to maximize teleoperation transparency by minimizing system impedance, enhance the wave variable method to handle time-varying network delays, and alleviate non-smooth effects caused by network jitters in bilateral teleoperation. The proposed methodologies take into account the real-world challenges and considerations to ensure the practical applicability and effectiveness of the teleoperation system. Throughout these implementations, passivity analysis is employed to ensure system stability, guaranteeing a reliable and safe teleoperation experience. The proposed approaches were successfully validated in Team Northeastern’s Avatar telepresence system, which achieved the 3rd place in ANA Avatar XPRIZE challenge.