The application of an impedance-passivity controller in haptic stability analysis

Abstract

This paper proposes a passivity theorem on the basis of energy concepts to study the stability of force feedback in a virtual haptic system. An impedance-passivity controller (IPC) was designed from the two-port network perspective to improve the chief drawback of haptic systems, namely the considerable time required to reach stability if the equipment consumes energy slowly. The proposed IPC can be used to achieve stability through model parameter selection and to obtain control gain. In particular, haptic performance can be improved for extreme cases of high stiffness and negative damping. Furthermore, a virtual training system for one-degree-of-freedom sticking was developed to validate the experimental platform of our IPC. To ensure consistency in the experiment, we designed a specialized mechanical robot to replace human operation. Finally, compared with basic passivity control systems, our IPC could achieve stable control rapidly.