Experiments results on robustness effects of a new prefilter in generalized predictive control: Application to bilateral teleoperation systems

This paper presents experiments results of a generalized predictive control (GPC) extension, called bilateral GPC (BGPC), for teleoperation systems. The originality of the proposed approach is principally characterized by its capacity to take into account the slave force feedback in the predictive algorithm in order to ensure a better tradeoff between the robust stability of the closed-loop system and its transparency. This bilateral predictive controller introduces a new prefilter which plays a key role to enhance robust stability of the overall control system to the detriment of performances. In this paper, the effects of this prefilter will be shown through experiments results in time domain with a comparison to those obtained with a PID controller. The experimental setup on a LAN (local area network) is composed by PHANTOM Omni for the master and by a single degree of freedom translational mechanism for the slave.