Using the Wave Variable Method for a Human-Machine Haptic Interface in the Presence of Time Delay

Even a small amount of time delay in a bilateral teleoperation system will generally degrade the system's performance and cause instability. Consequently, without some form of compensation for time delay, latencies in a teleoperation system would preclude the use of force feedback. Fortunately, there are approaches based on scattering theory and passivity that can compensate for time delay and allow the use of force feedback in teleoperation systems with latencies. In particular, the wave variable method is a passivity-based approach that guarantees stability for any fixed time delay. In this work, the authors take a generalized approach which includes the complete family of scaling matrices. This extended family of scaling matrices is used in an experiment with human subjects and a PHANToM Omni haptic teleoperation system. The experiment will compare the raw data with the users ' opinions in order to determine the best set of scaling matrices for the given task