Online Time Delay Estimation in Networked Control Systems with Application to Bilateral Teleoperation

The problem of forward and backward time delays is significantly important for both control and feedback loop of networked control systems. These time delays give rise to latency in performance and thereby may destabilize the system. Therefore numerous methods have been proposed about time delay identification/estimation and compensation for networked control systems, especially for bilateral teleoperation systems. However, most compensation methods have been accomplished by considering offline time delay estimation for linear/nonlinear time delay control systems. In this work, we propose an observer based estimation algorithm for round trip delay which is the sum of forward and backward time delays for a 1 degree-of-freedom nonlinear bilateral teleoperation system. Via Lyapunov based stability analysis, global boundedness of the observer errors along with their ultimate convergence and the convergence of the round trip delay estimator to the vicinity of its real value can be guaranteed in the closed loop system. Finally, simulation and experimental studies are carried out utilizing the last link of a PHANToM Omni Haptic device moving like a one link robot in the vertical plane.