Method for estimating the stability boundary of impedance haptic systems

The stability of impedance haptic systems is dependent upon several parameters such as sampling rate, time delay, virtual viscous damping, the flexibility of the mechanical interface, and in particular the dynamics of the human arm. Thus far, estimating the range of stable impedances for a specific device is an arduous task that requires many experiments. In this paper, a reliable and fast method for estimating the stability boundary of an impedance haptic system is presented. It extends traditional stability analyses to multiple degrees of freedom and workspace positions. Experiments are carried out on a PHANToM 1.0 haptic interface to validate the methodology.