Master-slave Teleoperation of Underactuated Mechanical Systems with Communication Delays

This paper addresses the control problem of master-slave teleoperation of a class of underactuated mechanical systems with communication delays. The core of the proposed solution introduces a suitable coupling matrix, so the complete error dynamics is written in a linear part, and a nonlinear one, for which the matching condition is satisfied. Then, from this representation, discontinuous causal controllers are designed to achieve bilateral coordination in force and position. The proposal is valid for underactuated manipulators with second-order non-holonomic constraints, and represents, to our best knowledge, a contribution in teleoperation systems where these mechanisms have been barely considered. Numerical simulations and real-time experiments developed over the Internet are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.