A control architecture for multi-master/multi-slave teleoperation

This paper presents a general architecture for teleoperation control in multi-master/multi-slave environments. The proposed framework incorporates flow of position and force information between all master and slave robots. Performance measures are defined to enhance coordination between the operators and robots for achieving the task objectives. A μ-synthesis-based methodology for cooperative teleoperation control design is introduced. The approach guarantees robust stability of the system in the presence of dynamic interaction between the slave robots and subject to any passive operators and environment dynamics. At the same time, it optimizes the performance through minimizing the performance indices defined for cooperative operation. Simulation results for a linear two-master/two-slave system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative teleoperation controllers.