Stable multilateral teleoperation with Time Domain Passivity Approach

In this paper, we propose a generalized method to represent multilateral teleoperation system as an electrical network with dependent effort/flow sources which allows us to implement Time Domain Passivity Approach (TDPA) to passivate the system. Using the conventional mechanical-electrical analogy, the multilateral teleoperation system with mechanical nature is modelled as an electrical circuit. Power correlated signal are then identified to extract the augmented network representation in which time-delay is taken into account. The passivity of multilateral teleoperation system are also analyzed and the method of using TDPA to passivate the network is proposed. This framework is independent of control architecture and communication delay. Experiment on a trilateral teleoperation system has been done and showed good performance with proposed method.