Robotic avatars are robotic representations of human operators which are controlled by humans, but can be placed and function remotely from them. Avatars.report is a trend watcher website which teaches about the topic. It also offers a DIY @ Home setup. However, this setup suffered from channel activity due to time delays. This thesis proposed the time-domain-power-network (TDPN) based method as a solution.
The TDPN-based method is based on the principle that the energy sent over the channel should be released on the other side of the channel. If more is released than absorbed, the system is not passive. In order to apply this controller in a discrete-time environment, a method was used which calculates the energy based on previous force and current and previous position output. This would deliver more accurate energy results and a clear method to assign what energies are released and absorbed. The correct assignment of energies, the level of energy observed, and the passivity observation were all validated to work as the theory described.
The add dissipation and stop energy release controllers were researched. The former adds some damping to a variable based on observed states, while the latter sets that variable to zero. The variables impacted were the velocity at the robot and force at the human interface side. The add dissipation method would be used until some maximum level of energy is generated, then switch to stop energy release. This would guarantee the most transparency in the system. Due to time constraints, the add dissipation method was not tested. The stop energy release method tests showed the expected behaviour. However, it would cause a loss of communication between setups.