Design of Master's Position Controller for Bilateral Control System with Time Delay

Abstract

A time delay between a master robot and slave robot degrades the stability of a bilateral control system. Thus, this paper presents an analysis on the relations between the position controller's gain on the master side, the control performance, and the stability. The analytical results showed that the stability is guaranteed when the gain is equal to the stiffness of the contact object. Accordingly, an adaptive controller that dynamically determines the gain depending on the stiffness was designed. The validity of the adaptive controller was verified through simulations and experiments.