Adaptive Fuzzy Logic Control for Time-Delayed Bilateral Teleoperation

Abstract

In recent years, teleoperation has shown great potentials in different fields such as spatial, mining, under-water, etc. When teleoperation is required to be bilateral, the time delay induced by a potentially large physical distance prevents a good performance of the controller, especially in case of contact. When bilateral teleoperation is introduced to the field of medicine, a new challenge arises: the controller needs to be used in both hard and soft environments. For example, in the context of telesurgery, the robot can enter in contact with both bone (hard) and organ (soft). In an attempt to enrich existing controller designs to better suit the medical needs, an adaptive fuzzy logic controller is designed in this text. It simulates human intelligence and adapts the controller to environments of different stiffness coefficients. It is compared to three other classical controllers used in the field of bilateral teleopeartion and demonstrates very interesting potential.