Stable kinematic teleoperation of wheeled mobile robots with slippage using time-domain passivity control

• DOI: 10.1016/j.mechatronics.2016.05.005
• Publication Date: 2016-06-01T02:17:24Z
• Authors: Weihua Li; Zhen Liu; Haibo Gao; Xuefeng Zhang; Mahdi Tavakoli
• Keywords: 0209 industrial biotechnology; 02 engineering and technology

Abstract Wheel slippage creates control challenges for wheeled mobile robots (WMR). This paper proposes a new method for haptic teleoperation control of a WMR with longitudinal slippage by using the time-domain passivity control (TDPC) approach. We show the potential non-passivity for the environment termination caused by the slippage dynamics. The utilized TDPC approach maintains the passivity of teleoperation system terminations through a passivity observer and a passivity controller at the environment termination. The teleoperation controllers are then simply constrained by Llewellyn's absolute stability criterion for closed-loop stability purposes. Experiments with the proposed controller demonstrate that it can result in stable bilateral teleoperation with a satisfactory tracking performance with TDPC.