Telemanipulation allows for operators to be able to control robots at very long range. This is useful in nuclear disaster scenarios, for example, where robots can perform rescue tasks instead of radiation-vulnerable humans.
To achieve effective telemanipulation, many challenges present themselves in terms of controller design.
Delay in the communication between master and slave, as well as dynamics of the master and slave devices reduce the effectiveness of telemanipulation systems.
Dynamics compensation, a widely used technique to compensate for the effect of dynamics on the master and slave system , can introduce instability into the system as these systems are active.
This project aims to introduce a passivity layer into the control system, and integrate it with a dynamics compensator such that the benefits of the latter do not have to come at the cost of the stability of the robot arm as a whole.
Achieving this will involve:
1. Research into passivity layers and how they may be integrated into a control system
2. Identification of the dynamics of the robotic system
3. The design of a passivified dynamics compensating controller and its implementation on a kuka robot arm.