Stabilizing impacts in force-reflecting teleoperation using distance-to-impact estimates

The level of force that can be stably reflected to the human operator in a force-reflecting teleoperator is constrained by the dynamics of impact between the slave arm and its environment. This paper models the underlying dynamics of impact and describes how the impact effects can be minimized using estimates of the distance between the slave and objects in its workspace Our approach is based on stochastic variational principles and seeks to limit the momentum of the slave arm at impact. Preliminary experimental results show that the approach allows extension of the range of frequencies that can be stably reflected to the human operator.