Position Tracking Performance of a Redundant Teleoperation System

Teleoperation has captured the interest of robotics researchers for more than two decades. Many focused on the stability problem when the system experiences time delays. Most of the time, guaranteeing stability has overshadowed the tracking performance. This work differentiates teleoperation systems into two groups as limited and unlimited-workspace teleoperation depending on their position tracking priorities. Specifically, this paper examines limited-workspace teleoperation on a redundant system. The slave is modeled to be the virtual representation of a Fanuc LR Mate 100iB, a five degree-of-freedom (DOF) serial industrial manipulator. The master is selected as a two-DOF force-reflecting joystick. Hence, the teleoperation system is redundant since the degree-of-freedom of the slave is greater than the master. Teleoperation experiments have been conducted for this system under constant time delays and communication losses. The results are presented when the customary and modified wave variable techniques are utilized.