Transparency optimized interaction in telesurgery devices via time-delayed communications

Low transparency is one of the major drawbacks of passivity-based control approaches in teleoperation systems, particularly when time delay exists in the communication channel. In this work, we improved the transparency of time-delayed teleoperation. For this, we used a passivity-based control approach with the generalized scattering transformation. To maximize a transparency criterion, the parameters of the generalized scattering transformation were optimized. Moreover, we show that communication channel disturbance attenuation is also improved. The proposed approach is validated on a master-slave robot interacting with an human eyeball model via a time delayed communication. Two classes of parameter sets are considered and compared against each other in sense of transparency and stability. Results verify a noticeable enhancement of transparency in stiffer environments by the proposed method.