Experimental Assessment of Absolute Stability in Bilateral Teleoperation

Absolute stability analysis of bilateral teleoperation systems are typically model-based. Under borderline conditions of absolute stability, depending on the degree of uncertainty in the dynamic model of the teleoperator and existing noise, the system may behave as potentially unstable when the model-based analysis predicts otherwise. In this article, we propose a methodology to experimentally verify the absolute stability of master-slave teleoperation systems. Since absolute stability demands bounds of all possible environments, we achieve this by conducting only three experiments that are often experienced in teleoperation: free slave, mass-carrying slave and locked slave (rigid environment). We will validate and compare our proposed method with the benchmark Llewellyns absolute stability criterion. Furthermore, we will examine the robustness of the proposed method and will provide guidelines for choosing the mass for the mass-carrying load condition.