Bilateral output based control of a Master-Slave mechanical system: An Active Disturbance Rejection approach

In this article, a bilateral output feedback controller to solve the trajectory tracking problem of a Master-Slave mechanical system is designed. A robust disturbance rejection scheme was implemented to regulate the slave trajectory. A Linear Extended State Observer of GPI class was used to, both, estimate the non-measurable states of the mechanical systems as well as the global disturbance input, which was assumed to be a lumped signal from non-modelled dynamics and external forces in the slave side. The bilateral controller was synthesised by means of two feedback strategies: estimation of disturbances and impedance based control. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the control scheme in a manipulation task.