Experimental evaluation of absolute stability in teleoperation systems

Absolute stability of teleoperation systems is analyzed based on linear models of such systems. These models are prone to dynamic and parametric uncertainties, which may result in a false robust stability outcome. In this paper, we propose an experimental methodology for the analysis of absolute stability of master-slave teleoperation systems. Using the properties of Möbius transformation, the methodology uses the force and position data collected from the three experiments locked-slave, mass-carrying slave, and free motion, to determine whether the passivity unit disk of the load mapped to the master side is within the passivity unit disk. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, numerical and experimental results for a force-position bilateral control architecture under constant time delays are provided.