Bilateral Control of Flexible Master-Slave Arms with Time-Varying Delay Affected by Contact Force from Obstacle

Abstract

A bilateral control system for flexible master-slave arms with time-varying delay affected by contact force from an obstacle is considered in this study. The proposed bilateral control system is constructed using a rigid master arm, a flexible slave arm actuated by a high-geared servomotor, and a communication network that causes the time-varying delay. The flexible slave arm is affected by contact force from the obstacle during motion. PD and PDS controllers are designed for controlling the rigid master and flexible slave arms, respectively. A Lyapunov function is used in order to prove the stability and passivity of the proposed system. Finally, performance of the proposed bilateral control system is verified by numerical simulations.

Keywords

• bilateral control system
• flexible slave arms
• time-varying delay
• obstacles
• lyapunov function