Measuring asymmetric haptic teleoperation device properties

Asymmetric haptic teleoperation, with a stiff master device and a compliant slave device, offers new possibilities to solve the contact instability problem. The prolonged timescale of the build-up of contact forces allows for stable teleoperation in contact also with stiff environments, which has been shown in force controlled robotics. This very principle can be applied to haptic teleoperation. When developing teleoperator devices with adjustable stiffness and damping, there arises a need to quickly and accurately determine the momentary compliance of the device. This paper describes a way to apply modern system identification methods to automatically identify various dynamic properties of teleoperation master and slave devices off-line. The main focus is on linear parametric identification, and the extension to nonlinear models is briefly explained, along with an example of identification measurements of the human operator.