Task Space Bilateral Teleoperation of Co-manipulators using Power-based TDPC and Leader-follower Admittance Control

In this paper, the bilateral teleoperation of cooperative manipulators is achieved and experimentally analyzed. The master and slave robots are asymmetrical, and only the master end effector’s task space velocity signals are transmitted through the communication network, while the task space force signals of slave robot are relayed back. A power-based time domain passivity control (PTDPC) approach is employed for the controller design to ensure the passivity of the communication channel in the presence of time-varying delays and are applied to each side of the communication channel at every time constant. This model-free method does not require the dynamic models of the master or slave systems to be known. The slave robot acts as the leader of the remote dual-arm cooperative manipulator system that is used to manipulate a common rigid object. This leader robot is controlled using position control mode to track the trajectory of the master, while the follower robot employs an admittance control method to follow the leader’s motion trend. The follower robot is not required to transmit or receive any communication data, which simplifies the network communication topology. Experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness and simplicity of the designed framework in the presence of large, time-varying and asymmetric delays.