Estimating Environment Parameters for Teleoperation System with Time Delay

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how recursive least squares (RLS) can be used to estimate the parameters of remote environment contact force which can be used to render a virtual environment on the operator side in a bilateral teleoperation system. Proper and fast estimation of the remote environment impedance plays a crucial role in the realization of local force controllers for time delayed teleoperation systems. Addressing that challenge, in this paper, three variants of RLS estimators are implemented and compared against three different impedance models. The algorithms are tested in the simulation environment making use of a recorded real experiment data set. The force reconstruction performances are compared to evaluate the implemented models and estimators. Based on the simulation results, one of the estimators and one of the models are selected for experimental validation on a single degree of freedom motion control system. The results obtained from the experiments confirm how the estimated forces match with that of the actual force responses and provide promising potential for further application in local force controllers of the teleoperation systems.