Stochastic stabilization for bilateral teleoperation over networks with probabilistic delays

This paper studies the bilateral teleoperation over communication networks. Specifically, the network-induced random delays are modeled as being from a finite set, each delay in the set having a probability of occurrence. To fully utilize the stochastic information inherent with the delays, a novel design scheme combining the probability information and pole placement is proposed to achieve better tracking performance. The teleoperation problem is first formulated as the stabilization of an error dynamic system where the error is the difference between the states of the master and slave. Then, by constructing a Lyapunov function, a sufficient condition to guarantee the input-to-state stability is established in terms of linear matrix inequalities. The simulation results and comparison show a decrease in tracking error with the new design method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.