Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 December 2014
Due to the special working environment of teleoperation, there are usually uncertainties existing in the dynamics of teleoperating robots. In this paper, an adaptive bilateral control scheme is proposed for the nonlinear teleoperation with parameterized dynamic uncertainties and time delays. Compared to the existing time-delay adaptive bilateral controllers, the proposed scheme has the advantage of faster and more accurate parameter adaptation. In this way, the transient performance of teleoperators can be improved without increasing the control gains, which is helpful for stability of teleoperation. The adaptive bilateral controller is designed to be applicable both in free motion and in constrained motion. The synchronization errors in the unconstrained subspace are asymptotically convergent under time delays. In the constrained subspace, the contact force remains bounded with the proposed controller. The stability of teleoperation is proved using Lyapunov methods and the passivity theory. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.