A Time-Delayed Multi-Master-Single-Slave Non-Linear Tele-Robotic System Through State Convergence

This paper presents the design of a multi-master-single-slave nonlinear tele-robotic system working in the presence of time varying delays. The structure of the proposed tele-robotic system is derived from the extended state convergence architecture and the control objective is defined as the position regulation of the slave manipulator. The desired reference value for the slave manipulator is set by the master systems according to their authority levels. To ensure that the tele-robotic system remains stable in the presence of time varying delays and the control objective is also achieved, Lyapunov-based stability analysis is carried out which results in certain guidelines to be followed for the selection of the control gains. In order to check the validity of the proposed scheme, MATLAB simulations are performed on a two degrees-of-freedom nonlinear tele-robotic system containing three master and single slave manipulators. Simulation results suggest that the proposed scheme is viable and can be deployed to control a class of multilateral nonlinear tele-robotic systems.