Bilateral teleoperation control without velocity measurements

This paper presents two controllers for a nonlinear bilateral teleoperation system that do not rely on velocity measurements. Under the reasonable assumptions that the human operator and the environment define passive maps from force to velocity, both controllers can ensure boundedness of velocities and position error. Moreover, if the human and environment forces are bounded, one of the controllers ensure velocity synchronization and the other velocity convergence to zero. Simulations, comparing the performance on free motion and interacting with a stiff wall, support the performance of the reported schemes. © 2011 IFAC