Robust control design for cooperative teleoperation

Cooperative teleoperation involves multiple operators interacting in a remote environment through multiple master and slave manipulators. This paper proposes a multilateral control architecture for teleoperation in cooperative environments. The proposed framework allows for transmission of position and force information between all master and slave robots rather than merely between corresponding units. A p-synthesis-based control design is introduced for the proposed architecture. This approach guarantees robust stability of cooperative teleoperation in the presence of dynamic interaction between slave robots as well as unknown passive operators and environment dynamics. It also enhances task coordination by optimizing relevant cooperative performance objectives. Experimental studies carried out with a two-master/two-slave single-axis system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.