Adaptive passive control with varying time delay

This paper presents a passive control scheme for a force reflecting bilateral teleoperation system with a varying time communication delay. To improve the stability and performance of the system, the master and slave must be coupled dynamically via a transmission network through which the force and velocity are communicated bilaterally. However, the time delay caused by various factors, such as the transmission distance, network congestion, and communication bandwidth, is a long-standing impediment to bilateral control that can destabilize the system. In this study, we investigated how a varying time delay affects the stability of a teleoperation system. A new optimal adaptive approach based on a passive control scheme was designed bilaterally for both the master and slave sites. Extra variables were transmitted together with the wave variables in the scattering system. The proposed scheme achieved both passive control, and an acceptable tracking performance. The tracking performance was demonstrated using a computer simulation of varying time delays in a bilateral teleoperation system.