ABSTRACT
Communication time delays in a bilateral teleoperation system often carries a stochastic nature, particularly when we have multiple masters or slaves. In this paper, we tackle the problem for a single-master multislave (SMMS) teleoperation system by assuming an asymmetric and semi-Markovian jump protocol for communication of the slaves with the master under time-varying transition rates. A nonlinear robust controller is designed for the system that guarantees its global robust H∞ stochastic stability in the sense of the Lyapunov theory. Employing the nonlinear feedback linearization technique, the dynamics of the closed-loop teleoperator is decoupled into two interconnected subsystems: 1) master-slave tracking dynamics (coordination) and 2) multislave synchronization dynamics. Employing an improved reciprocally convex combination technique, the stability analysis of the closed-loop teleoperator is conducted using the Lyapunov-Krasovskii methodology, and the stability conditions are expressed in the form of linear matrix inequalities that can be solved efficiently using numerical algorithms. Numerical studies and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed controller design algorithm in both tracking and synchronization performance of the SMMS system, and robustly handling the stochastic and nondifferentiable nature of communication delays.
