Digital versus analog control of bilateral teleoperation systems: A task performance comparison

Controller discretization has the potential to jeopardize the stability of a bilateral teleoperation system. As reported in the literature, stability conditions impose bounds on the gains of the discrete-time controller and the sampling period and also a trade-off between the two. This paper shows a choice of task for which large sampling periods, necessitating low control gains for maintaining stability, lead to low teleoperation transparency and unacceptable task performance. It continues to show that users can successfully perform the same task if the controller is implemented using analog components. This highlights the advantages of analog haptics in tasks involving the display of highly stiff environments. The paper also highlights the constraints in designing analog haptic teleoperation controllers and proposes design guidelines to address them. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.