Explicit adaptive time-delay compensation for bilateral teleoperation

This paper proposes a control framework that addresses the destabilizing effect of communication time-delays and system uncertainties in telerobotics, in the presence of force-feedback. Force feedback is necessary to obtain transparency, which is providing the human operator as close a feel as possible of the environment where the slave robot is operating. Achieving stability and providing transparency are conflicting goals. This is the major reason why currently a very few, if at all, fully operational force feedback teleoperation devices exist except for research environments. The proposed framework handles system uncertainty with adaptation and communication time delays with explicit delay compensation. The technology that allows this explicit adaptive time-delay compensation is inspired by MIT's Adaptive Posicast Controller.