A gain-switching control scheme for position-error-based force-reflecting teleoperation

To lower the cost of a force-reflecting teleoperation system, position errors instead of direct measurements from force/torque sensors can be used for force feedback. However, the position-position architecture with fixed PD controllers provides poor transparency. A gain-switching control scheme is developed in this paper to solve this problem. Based on the detection of the impedance change at the slave site, the master and slave PD controller gains are switched accordingly. Experimental results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.