Quantitative Comparison of Bilateral Teleoperation Systems with Various Drive Mechanisms and Sensory Configurations

The previous approaches in the teleoperation literature focus on the design of robust controllers for a specified bilateral teleoperation system. However, the performance of the system depends on the task, mechanism, and sensory configuration as well as the controller. This paper presents a quantitative comparison framework of bilateral teleoperation systems with various drive mechanisms and sensory configurations for a given 'task dependant performance objective (TDPO)'. mu-synthesis is used to develop the framework since it can efficiently treat systems with uncertainty and disturbance. How to apply this framework to a bilateral teleoperation system including an uncertain human operator and environment is shown through a practical case study. The proposed framework can be used as a tool to design a bilateral teleoperation systems, especially when there are constraints in designing drive mechanisms and choosing sensory configurations