Symmetric Operational Force Compensator for Bilateral Teleoperation under Time Delay Based on Power Flow Direction

This paper proposes an operational force reduction method for four-channel bilateral teleoperation under time delay. The four-channel bilateral control is an attractive way to realize a remote control with haptic sensation. In general, the haptic sensation deteriorates under the time delay in the four-channel bilateral teleoperation, e.g., operationality of the teleoperation, stability of the system, and other performances. To improve the operationality in free motion, a communication disturbance observer and a three-channel bilateral control have been proposed. Although the operational force in the free motion is reduced by these methods, the system becomes asymmetric. This means that the performance of the remote control from the slave side deteriorates in these methods. To overcome this problem, a novel symmetric compensator by using variable compliance control is proposed. A feedback gain is varied based on a power flow direction. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by experimental results.