Adaptive impedance control of a haptic interface

Teleoperation enables an operator to manipulate remote objects. One of the main goals in teleoperation research is to provide the operator with the feeling of the telepresent object and of being present at the remote site. In order for this to happen, a master robot must be designed as a bilateral control system that can transmit position commands to a slave robot and reflect the interaction force. A newly proposed adaptive impedance algorithm is applied to the force control of a haptic interface that has been developed as a master robot. With the movement of the haptic interface for position command generation, the impedance between an operator and the haptic interface varies dynamically. When the impedance parameters and the dynamics of the haptic interface are known precisely, many model based control theories and methods can be used to control the interface accurately. However, due to the parameters' variations and the uncertainty in the dynamic model, it is difficult to control the interface precisely. Therefore, this paper proposes a new adaptive impedance control algorithm and experimentally verifies the effectiveness of the algorithm for control of the haptic interface. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.