High performance and stable teleoperation under bounded operator and environment dynamics

The control design for bilateral teleoperation systems represents a challenge in finding the proper balance in the inherent trade-off between transparency and stability. We address this problem by making use of a parametric model of the teleoperation system, which allows us to put independent bounds on the uncertain parameters without introducing conservatism in the model. Consequently, we exploit robust control techniques based on Linear Matrix Inequalities theory to design controllers that guarantee performance and stability for a specific range of time varying environment and operator dynamics. We present experimental results of the designed controllers, thus demonstrating in practice the effectiveness of the method to trade-off perfect transparency and stability in a suitable way.