Bilateral Control of a Velocity Control System using Electric and Hydraulic Actuators

Abstract

Working in extreme environments (e.g., working at disaster sites) is dangerous for humans. Hence, it is important to use teleoperated robots in such extreme environments. Because heavy lifting work is involved, hydraulic actuators of high output are more commonly used than electric actuators. Therefore, it is necessary to operate remotely controlled robots driven by hydraulic actuators. Bilateral control is remote control with the sense of force. Because most bilateral control systems have been studied mainly using electric actuators, bilateral control using hydraulic actuators is still a challenge. In this study, we propose placing a bilateral controller between an electric actuator on the master side and a hydraulic actuator on the slave side using the position and velocity. The controller exhibits the dynamics of bilateral control systems using the position and velocity. In addition, the control performance of conventional methods and the proposed method are compared and experimentally verified.