Designing teleoperator architectures for transparency

The author provides tools for analyzing the performance of various teleoperation systems, including the effects of communication delay. A general multivariable system architecture is utilized which includes all four types of data transmission between master and slave robot; force and position in both directions. It is shown that a proper use of all four channels is of critical importance in achieving high-performance telepresence in the sense of accurate transmission of task impedances to the operator. Achieved transparency and stability properties of two common architectures, as well as a transparency-optimized architecture are quantitatively compared on simplified one-degree-of-freedom examples