Acceleration feedback control for nonlinear teleoperation systems with time delays

A procedure for acceleration feedback control of the delayed nonlinear teleoperation system is proposed. The acceleration feedback is applied to the master controller, while in the slave side the position error plus nonlinear damping controller is used to guarantee the input-to-state stability (ISS) of the controlled system. The Lyapunov-Krasovskii methodology is applied to analyse the ISS of the closed-loop system, and hence the passivity assumption for human operators and the environment is not required. The stability criterion is formulated in the form of linear matrix inequalities. The behaviour of the resulting teleoperation system is illustrated in simulations, while the simulation results show that the acceleration feedback controller not only preserves good position tracking performance but also eludes contact instability.