Adaptive synchronization of bilateral teleoperators with time delay

Abstract

In this chapter we develop schemes for synchronization of bilateral teleoperators. It is well known that a feedback interconnection of two passive systems is passive. We discuss an extension of this property to the case when there are heterogeneous, constant communication delays in the interconnection. If the interconnected systems are output strictly passive, we show that their feedback interconnection is passive independent of the constant delays. We exploit this property to achieve delay-independent output synchronization. This result is then used in the problem of bilateral teleoperation to synchronize the master/slave velocities in free motion. We also develop an architecture that guarantees state synchronization of the master/slave robots in free motion independent of the constant delay. Experimental results are presented to verify the efficacy of the state-synchronizing architecture. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.