Design of A Nonlinear Bilateral Teleoperation System coupled with non-passive Environments

Stability and transparency are both very important conditions in bilateral teleoperation systems. For the design of such systems, different methods have been suggested. Among the approaches presented, passivity framework is widely utilized in which human and environment is considered passive. The operator does not make the closed-loop system unstable. In addition, it is passive against an external input. Thus the adoption of this assumption is correct for the human. Nevertheless it is a conservative presumption for the environment and according to some modern applications of teleoperation systems such as cardiac surgery, it is absolutely not acceptable. In this paper a novel control structure for nonlinear bilateral teleoperation systems interacting with active environments is addressed. In this approach, first a criterion for measuring activity of the environment is presented. Then by developing a PD controller, an algorithm that guarantees master-slave position coordination and static force reflection is introduced. The overall stability of closed loop system is proved using passivity concept and Lyapunov-Krasovskii technique. Simulations are performed to verify the performance of the proposed bilateral teleoperation systems in contact with passive and non-passive environments. Experimental results were carried out to validate the theoretical consequences.