2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
Multi-operator/Multi-robot Teleoperation: An Adaptive
Nonlinear Control Approach
Shahin Sirouspour and Peyman Setoodeh
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1, Canada
sirouspour@ece.mcmaster.ca, setoodp@mcmaster.ca
Abstract— Cooperative telerobotic systems consist of multiple
pairs of master/slave robotic manipulators operating in a
shared environment. This paper presents a multilateral adaptive
nonlinear control architecture for cooperative teleoperation. The
proposed framework allows for transmission of position and
force information between all master and slave robots rather
than merely between corresponding units. An adaptive non-
linear controller establishes kinematic correspondence among
masters and slaves. The operators are presented with a virtual
intervening tool in order to collaboratively interact with the
environment. Models of operators, master and slave robots, tool,
and environment are incorporated in the design. The stability
of the system in the presence of parametric uncertainty in
the dynamics is proven via Lyapunov analysis. Simulation and
experimental studies demonstrate that the proposed approach is
highly effective in all phases of a teleoperation task, i.e. in free
motion, in contact with a flexible environment, and in contact
with a rigid environment.
Index Terms— Cooperative Teleoperation, Multi-
master/Multi-slave Teleoperation, Robot Control, Nonlinear
Control, Adaptive Control.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Over the past two decades, applications of teleoperation
technology have been steadily growing in space and underwa-
ter exploration, mining, toxic and nuclear material handling,
the entertainment industry, and more recently in health care
[1]. Telerobotic systems deliver the human intelligence and
manipulation skills combined with robot precision, repeata-
bility and power to inaccessible or remote environments. This
is achieved through coordinated control of a master robotic
arm, locally used by the operator, and a slave manipulator
which mimics the operator’s actions in the task environment.
Cooperative robotic manipulation has advantages over
single-robot manipulation, such as increased dexterity, im-
proved handling capability, increased loading capacity, and
enhanced robustness due to redundancy. Cooperative tele-
operation combines advantages of human collaboration and
robotic manipulation. It can be employed in traditional tele-
operation applications as well as emerging areas such as
robot-assisted surgery (e.g. a surgeon may use two robotic
∗ This work was supported by National Sciences and Engineering Re-
search Council of Canada, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and Ontario
Innovation Trust.
0-7803-8912-3/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE. 2506
arms to telemanipulate a surgical instrument). Despite ex-
tensive amount of research in teleoperation, e.g. [2]–[8],
and coordinated control of robots, e.g. [9], [10], multi-
master/multi-slave teleoperation has received little attention
in the past. This includes the work in [11] which proposes the
use of heuristic methods such as predictive graphic displays
to address the time delay in the communication channels in
cooperative telerobotic environments. Approaches based on
Petri Net models and event-based planning and control, have
been recently developed in [12] for remote operation in multi-
robot environments. An Internet-based distributed, multiple-
telerobot system that enables operators to use remote robots
in order to perform cooperative tasks has been introduced
in [13].
In cooperative teleoperation, multiple slave robots dynam-
ically interact, directly or through an intervening tool dynam-
ics. Designs based on conventional single-master/single-slave
architectures fail to address the performance and stability re-
quirements of cooperative teleoperation as they often neglect
these interactions. The issues of performance and stability for
such systems must be addressed under these constraints.
This paper follows upon the first author’s earlier work [14]
in which a general architecture for cooperative teleoperation
control was introduced. In that work, a µ-synthesis based
robust linear controller was developed assuming dynamically
linearized models for the operators, masters, slaves, and
environment. The controller utilizes all possible communi-
cation channels between the master and slave manipulators.
Alternatively, this paper proposes an adaptive nonlinear con-
troller to accommodate nonlinearity and parametric uncer-
tainty in the system dynamics. The control laws are inspired
by those given in [7] for conventional single-master/single-
slave teleoperation. The major contribution of this paper is
extending such control approach to cooperative teleoperation
applications where multiple masters and slaves are involved.
To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first time that
a provably stable adaptive nonlinear controller for cooperative
teleoperation is reported.
The proposed multilateral teleoperation controller estab-
lishes position-position kinematic correspondence between
the masters and slaves. It also synthesizes an adjustable
intervening tool impedance between the operators and the
environment. The stability of the closed-loop system in free
motion, and in contact with flexible and rigid environments
is demonstrated via the Lyapunov analysis. The novelty of
the proposed cooperative controller is due to: (i) explicitly
addressing the issues of performance and stability in the
presence of dynamic interaction between the slaves as well as
in the presence of unknown operators and the environment
dynamics. This is in contrast with the few reported work
in cooperative teleoperation which either do not consider
such dynamic interactions or only study the problem of free
motion coordination. (ii) its data communication architecture
which allows for all possible information routs.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Dynamics of
a cooperative teleoperation system is introduced in Section II.
The adaptive nonlinear controllers for master and slave robots
are briefly discussed in Section III. The coordinating teleop-
eration control laws are presented in Section IV. Experimental
results for a single-axis two-master/two-slave design example
are given in Section V. The paper is concluded in Section VI.
II. C OOPERATIVE T ELEOPERATION
Figure 1 displays a conceptual cooperative teleoperation
system in which m operators collaborate in performing a task
through controlling m slave robots and a tool. The operators
can move the tool in free motion, interact with a flexible
environment, and make contact with a rigid environment.
Cooperative teleoperation could also include applications in
which a single operator employs two hand controllers and
two robotic arms to complete a task.
In [14], it has been proposed to establish data links
between all master and slave units. Within such framework,
each master and slave robot can receive position and force
information from all other master and slave units. The extra
communication links can be utilized to facilitate coordination
among operators. For example, the controller can assist the
operators in simultaneous grasping of an object through
imposing virtual constraints on positions of the slaves and
masters such that the slaves always keep the same distance
from the object. Using this architecture, it is also possible
to impose a virtual intervening tool dynamics between the
operators and the environment that they are working on.
Another advantage of the proposed architecture over tradi-
tional approaches is in applications where communication
delays are different throughout various channels. The local
information links can be utilized to reduce instability due to
links with large delays.
The i’th master’s rigid body dynamics are governed by
a second-order nonlinear differential equation and the op-
erator’s arm dynamics are approximated by a second-order
linear time-invariant differential equation. When the operator
holds the master handle, i.e. xim = xih , the dynamics of the
2507
Fig. 1. Schematic of a cooperative teleoperation system.
i’th master and operator can be integrated as follows
Mmh
i
Φ̈i (xim )+Cmh i
(Φi (xim ), Φ̇i (xim ))Φ̇i (xim )+Gimh (xim )


= Ymhi
Φ̈i (xim ), Φ̇i (xim ), Φ̇i (xim ), Φi (xim ) θmh
i
= f¯m
i
+ f¯h∗i (1)
with xim ∈ R6 being the generalized position of a frame
attached to the i’th master’s handle w.r.t. its base frame; f¯m i
is the transformed control action and f¯h∗i is the operator’s
intentional force, which is assumed to be bounded, i.e.
|f¯h∗ij | < fmax
ij
; Φi (xim ) is the generalized master’s position
transformed to the virtual tool frame. In (1), Ymh i
θmh
i
is the
linear-in-parameter representation of the dynamics with θmh i
being the vector of unknown parameters of the operator and
possibly the master arm [15].
It is assumed that the slave robots are rigidly holding
the tool and have formed a closed kinematic chain. This
assumption imposes the following constraint on the positions
of the slaves and the tool.
xt = Ψ1 (x1s ) = Ψ2 (x2s ) = · · · = Ψm (xm
s ) (2)
where xt is the generalized position of a frame attached to
the tool at its potential contact point with the environment, xis
is the generalized position of a frame attached to the contact
point of the i’th slave and tool represented in the slaves’ base
frame and Ψ’s are appropriate coordinate transformations.
The tool-environment contacts are considered to be rigid
along some a priori known directions and flexible along the
rest. To simplify the analysis and without loss of generality,
it is further assumed the slaves’ base frame has been selected
such that rigid and flexible coordinates are decoupled in
generalized tool position vector xt . Therefore, xt can be
written as xt = ∆r xre + (I − ∆r ) xt where xre is a vector
of constant contact positions along the rigid directions and
∆r is a 6 × 6 diagonal matrix that its i’th diagonal element
is one when there is rigid contact in the i’th direction and
otherwise is zero. Hence, ∆r ẋt = 0 and ∆r ẍt = 0, and the
environment reaction force fe can be written in terms of its
flexible and rigid components as follows action is Fs ∈ Rmn while xt ∈ Rn , Fsint is an internal force
component that does not affect the motion of the tool, i.e.
fe = ∆r fe + ∆f (Me ẍt + Be ẋt + Ke xt ) (3)
Jt Fsint = 0. This can help maintain the contact between the
where fe is a generalized force exerted on the environment slave manipulators and the tool if the end-effectors are not
by the tool at its contact point and ∆r fe is a vector of en- equipped with grippers.
vironment reaction forces along the rigid coordinates. Again The slave/environment parameter adaptation is driven by
∆f is a 6 × 6 diagonal matrix that its i’th diagonal element is ˙
θ̂ste = Γs Yste
T
(v̇tr , vtr , xt , xt ) ρt = Γs yθ (6)
one when there is flexible contact in the i’th direction and is
zeros otherwise; Me , Be , Ke ≥ 0 are constant matrices that where Γs is a diagonal matrix with elements
model the dynamics of the flexible part of the environment.  i
Since the rows and columns associated with rigid coordinates 
0 θ̂si ≤ θsmin , yθi ≤ 0
are zero, these matrices are positive semi-definite. γ ii = 0 θ̂si ≥ θsmax i , yθi ≥ 0 (7)

 i
Similarly, the dynamics of slave robots are governed by γs otherwise
second-order nonlinear differential equations and tool dynam-
ics are governed by a second-order linear differential equa- γ i ’s are positive and θsmin and θsmax are known lower and
tion. Dynamics of the slave robots, tool and the environment upper bounds on the parameters.
(3) can be combined to obtain The Control command for the i’th master is computed
using


Mste ẍt + Cste (xt , ẋt )ẋt + Gste =
fm
i
= Ymh
i
v̇m , vm , Φ̇i (xim ), Φi (xim ) θ̂mh
ri ri i
+ Km ρm
i i

m
T
Yste (ẍt , ẋt , ẋt , xt ) θste = Jti fsi − ∆r fe (4) +fmax
i
sgn(ρim )
i=1
vm
ri
= vm
di
+ Kp−1 Aim f˜hi , ρim = vm
ri
− Φ̇i (xim ) (8)
where the vector θste includes unknown parameters of the
flexible environment and possibly the slave robots and the Km i
, Λ, Kp , Am > 0 are diagonal and f˜hi is a filtered hand
tool; fsi is the equivalent force. The i’th master/operator parameter adaptations are

 control action in the slaves’ base
−1 given by
∂Ψi
frame and Jti = ∂xis .

˙i
θ̂mh = Γim YmhT
v̇m , vm , Φ̇i (xim ), Φi (xim ) ρim = Γim zθi (9)
ri ri
III. A DAPTIVE N ONLINEAR C ONTROL FOR M ASTERS
AND S LAVES where Γim is a diagonal matrix with elements similar to those
The first step in deriving the cooperative teleoperation of Γs .
controllers is to design adaptive nonlinear control laws for B. Stability Analysis
master and slave robots. These controllers are similar to
those in [7] with two exceptions: First, there are multiple The following closed-loop error dynamics are obtained
slave manipulators and a tool here which form a closed for the slaves/tool/evironment and the i’th master/operator
kinematic chain and therefore their dynamics are coupled. subsystems by substituting control laws in (5) and (8) into
In [7] only one slave was considered. Second, Reference (4) and (1), respectively
   
[7] divides the contact space into two rigid and flexible Mste + ∆r C −1 A−1
s ρ̇t + Cste + ∆r A−1
s + K s ρt
subspaces. The modelling in this paper is slightly different
−Yste θ̃ste = 0 (10)
as it permits several flexible and rigid contact coordinates. In
other words, all flexible or rigid contacts do not necessarily
Mmh
i
(Φi (xim ))ρ̇im + Cmh
i
(Φi (xim ), Φ̇i (xim ))ρim +
occur simultaneously.
Km ρm + f¯h∗i + fmax
i i i
sgn(ρim ) − Ymhi
θ̃m
i
=0 (11)
A. Control Laws
with θ̃ste = θste − θ̂ste and θ̃m
i
= θmi
− θ̂m
i
. Candidate
The control laws for the slave robots are given by
Lyapunov functions for the error dynamics in (10) and (11)
 T
Fs = Jt† us + Fsint , Fs = fs1 · · · fsm are
us = Yste (v̇tr , vtr , ẋt , xt ) θ̂ste + Ks ρt + 1   1
 −1 d  Vs = ρTt Mste + ∆r C −1 A−1 ρt + θ̃sT Γs −1 θ̃s (12)
2 s
2
A−1
s ∆r C v̇t + vtd
v r = v d − As f˜e , ρt = v r − vt
t t t (5) Vmi =
1 i T i i
ρ Mmh ρm + θ˜m
1 i T i −1 i
Γm θ̃m (13)
2 m 2
and Ks , C, As > 0 are diagonal matrices, vtd is tool velocity
It is not difficult to show that
command, f˜e is a filtered environment reaction force that  
will be introduced in the next section. The slaves’ control V̇s ≤ −ρt ∆r A−1s + K s ρt (14)

2508
 T
V̇mi ≤ −ρim Km ρm
i i
(15) which yields the following results

The results in (12)-(15) yield Φj (xjm ) − Φi (xim ) , Φ̇j (xjm ) − Φ̇i (xim ) ∈ L2 L∞ (25)

ρim = vm
di
− Φ̇(xim ) + Aim f˜hi ∈ L2 L∞ , i = 1, · · · , m and therefore the position tracking error between the i’th and

ρt = vtd − vt − As f˜e ∈ L2 L∞ (16) j’th master devices is stable. Furthermore,
Kp m k 1 m 
The switching terms in the masters’ control law (8) elim- ρt − Σk=1 ρm = Σk=1 Kp Φ̃˙ k (xkm ) − Ψ̃ ˙ k (xk ) +
inate the error due to unknown bounded external force fh∗ i .  m 2m 
s

However, high frequency switching activities are undesirable Kp m Kp m
Σ Φ̇ (xm ) − vt + Λ
k k
Σ Φ (xm ) − xt
k k
because they can excite unmodelled dynamics and cause m k=1 m k=1
instability. They can also negatively impact the life of the 1 
+ ΛΣm K p Φ̃ (x
k k
) − Ψ̃ (x
k k
) (26)
actuators. In practice, this can be resolved by replacing the 2m k=1 m s

sgn() with a smooth function or alternatively, by including K 

Again given that ρt − mp Σm k=1 ρm ∈ L2
k
L∞ and following
fh∗ in θm and estimating it in real-time. The latter approach
similar steps to (21)-(23), it can be shown that
is adopted in this paper.
Kp m Kp m
IV. T ELEOPERATION C OORDINATING C ONTROLLERS Σ Φk (xkm ) − xt , Σ Φ̇k (xkm ) − vt
m k=1 m k=1 
Local adaptive nonlinear controllers in (5) and (8) guaran-
∈ L2 L∞ (27)
tee the stability of ρim and ρt . The operation of masters and
slaves are coordinated through the design of desired velocity Therefore, the stability of tracking errors between scaled
commands vm di
in (8) and vtd in (5) as follows: masters’ and slaves’ positions is guaranteed.
Λ 
Next, the force tracking behavior of the proposed cooper-
vmdi
= Σm Φ̃ (x
k k
) − Φ (x
i i
) − Kp−1 As f˜e
2m − 2 k=1,=i m m
ative teleoperation controller is studied.
Kp−1 
+ −1 m
k=1 Ψ̃ (xs ) − Kp Φ (xm ) +Kp Σk=1,=i Am fh
ΛΣm k k i i k ˜k Kp m k Kp m ˙ k k k 
2m ρt + Σk=1 ρm = Σk=1 Φ̃ (xm )vm − Φ̇k (xkm )
−1  m m

+
1
Σm ˙ k (xk ) + Kp Σm Ψ̃
Φ̃ ˙ k (xk ) (17) 1 m ˙k k Kp 
2m − 2 k=1,=i m
2m k=1 s + Σk=1 Ψ̃ (xs ) − vt + ΛΣm Φ̃ (x
k k
) − Φ (x
k k
) +
m m k=1 m m
   
Kp m ˙ k k 1 m 1 m 1 m ˙ k (xk ) − Ψ̃˙ k (xk )

vtd = Σk=1 Φ̃ (xm )+Kp Λ Σk=1 Φ̃k (xkm ) − Kp−1 xt Λ Σk=1 Ψ̃k (xks ) − xt + Σk=1 Kp Φ̃
m m m 2m m s

k ˜k 1 
+ Σm k ˜k ˜
k=1 Am fh (18) + ΛΣm K Φ̃ (x ) − Ψ̃ (xs +2Σk=1 Am fh −2As fe
)
k k k k m
p
2m k=1 m

In the above formulation (28)

˙ It should be noted that
Φ̃˙ k (xkm ) + C Φ̃k (xkm ) = CΦk (xkm ) , f˜hk + C f˜hk = C f¯hk ˙ k (xk )
˙ k (xk ) + C Ψ̃k (xk ) = CΨk (xk ) , ˙ Φ̃k (xk ) − Φk (xk ) = −C −1 Φ̃
f˜e + C f˜e = Cfe(19)
m m m
Ψ̃ s s s ˙ k (xk )
−1
Ψ̃
k
(xks )− xt = −C Ψ̃ s
Using (5),(8),(17), and (18), it can be shown ˙Φ̃k (xk ) − Φ̇k (xk ) = −C −1 Φ̃ ¨ k (xk )
m m m
  ˙ k (xk ) − v = −C −1 Ψ̃
¨ k (xk )
ρim − ρjm = Λ Φj (xjm ) − Φi (xim ) + Φ̇j (xjm ) − Φ̇i (xim )+ Ψ̃ s t s (29)
1

˙ i (xi ) + Λ Φ̃j (xj ) − Φ̃(xi ) ]
[Φ̃˙ j (xjm ) − Φ̃ and also from (26),
2m − 2 m m m

(20) 1
Σ m
K Φ̃ ˙ k (xk ) ∈ L  L
˙ k (xk ) − Ψ̃
Equation (20) can be written as 2m k=1 p m s 2 ∞
 
1 1
2m ΛΣk=1 Kp Φ̃ (xm ) − Ψ̃ (xs ) ∈ L2 L∞
m k k k k
ρim − ρjm = Ω̃ij + Ωij (21) (30)
2m − 2
Using (28)-(30) results in
 
Ω = Φ̇
ij j
(xjm ) − Φ̇ i
(xim ) + Λ Φj (xjm ) − Φi (xim ) (22)
˜k ˜ Kp C −1 m ¨ k k
k=1 Am fh − 2As fe −
2Σm Σk=1 Φ̃ (xm )−
˙ ij + C Ω̃ij = CΩij m
Ω̃ (23) C −1 m ¨ k k Kp C −1 Λ m ˙ k k
 Σk=1 Ψ̃ (xs ) − Σk=1 Φ̃ (xm )−
Using (21), (23) and the fact that ρim − ρjm ∈ L2 L∞ , m m
C −1 Λ m ˙ k k 
 Σk=1 Ψ̃ (xs ) ∈ L2 L∞ (31)
Ωij ∈ L2 L∞ (24) m

2509
Note that
As f˜e = As ∆r f˜e + As ∆f f˜e (32)
and from (5) and (18)

As ∆r f˜e = ∆r vtd − ∆r ρt = ∆r Σm ˜k
k=1 Am fh − ∆r ρt − Λxt
Kp ˙k Kp Λ
+ ∆r Σm k=1 Φ̃ (xm ) + ∆r Σmk=1 Φ̃ (xm ) (33)
k k
m m
and using (3)
 
As ∆f f˜e = As Me x̃¨t + Be x̃˙ t + Ke x̃t (34)

¨ k (xk ) − B k Φ̃˙ k (xk ) − K k Φ̃k (xk ) (35)

f˜hk = f˜h∗k − Mhk Φ̃ m h m h m
f˜˙h∗k + C f˜h∗k = C f¯h∗k (36)
The following conclusions are drawn by substituting (32)-
(35) into (31),
Φ̃k (xkm ) , Φ̃˙ k (xkm ) , Φk (xkm ) , Φ̇k (xkm ) ∈ L∞ (37)
˙
Ψ̃ (x ) , Ψ̃ (x ) , Ψ (x ) , Ψ̇ (x ) ∈ L
k k k k k k k k
(38)
s s s s ∞
This completes the proof of stability for the closed-loop
system. Using a rigorous analysis similar to that in [7], it
is possible to show that ρim ’s and ρt converge to zero. The
convergence of position tracking errors to zero can then be
concluded.
Now by letting Am = Kf Af and assuming that the
frequency of operation is below the bandwidth of the first-
order filter C/2π, (34) can be approximated by
¯k −1
k=1 fh − Kf fe
Σm
 Experimental results for flexible contact are shown in
≈ Kf−1 Kp A−1 C −1 Φ̈(xm ) + ΛΦ̇(xm ) (39)
This can be interpreted as a virtual intervening tool dy-
namics with a mass of Kf−1 Kp A−1 C −1 and damping of
Kf−1 Kp A−1 C −1 Λ acting between the scaled environment
force Kf−1 fe and the operators’ net force Σm ¯k
k=1 fh . The mass
and stiffness of virtual tool are adjustable by the control
parameters A, C, Kp , Kf , and Λ.
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
This section presents the results of experimental studies
conducted for evaluation of the proposed cooperative teleop-
eration scheme on a single-axis linear two-master/two-slave
system. The experimental setup is displayed in Figure 2.
The two side carts on a linear track are motorized and are
used as the slaves in the experiments. The middle cart can
freely move on the track and is employed as the tool. Its
motion is blocked in one direction by a rigid stop inserted
in the middle of the track under the tool. The position of the
slaves are measured by rotary optical encoders. Two force
sensors measure the interaction force between the slaves
and the tool. The master devices are two identical planar
Fig. 2. The cooperative teleoperation experimental setup.
twin pantograph haptic interfaces, each capable of producing
three active degrees of motion. The motion of each device is
restricted to a single axis via the application of a workspace
proportional-derivative controller. Disturbance observers have
been designed and implemented to estimate the operators’
hand forces rather using actual force sensors.
The control algorithm has been implemented using Matlab
Realtime Workshop Toolbox and Tornado 2.2/VxWorks 5.4
RTOS by WindRiver. The control rate is set to 1024Hz.
Two sets of experiments were conducted, one with flexible
contact and another with rigid contact. In the experiments,
two operators cooperatively moved the tool in free motion
and made contact with the environment several times. Ex-
periments were repeated with different operators and similar
behavior was observed.
A. Flexible Environment
Figure 3. The system demonstrates accurate position tracking
both in free motion and in contact with the environment. In
contact situation, the force exerted on the environment by
the tool, tracks the operators’ net force after the velocity of
the tool approaches zero. This is expected behavior due to
the intervening tool dynamics. Also, the adaptive controller
is able to estimate the environment stiffness effectively as
shown in Figure 3(c). The small non-zero stiffness estimates
in free motion are most likely due to environment force
observation errors.
B. Rigid Environment
Experimental results for the rigid contact are presented
in Figure 4. The rigid contact behavior is stable and well
damped. The position tracking is accurate both in free motion
and in contact phases. The system also demonstrates excellent
force tracking between the operators’ net force and the
environment force when the tool is pushed against the rigid
environment. Keeping the tool in contact with the rigid
environment, oscillatory forces were intentionally exerted
by operators to evaluate the force tracking ability of the
controller.

2510

Fig. 3. Experimental results for flexible environment: (a) position tracking
(b) force tracking (c) environment’s stiffness estimate.
Fig. 4. Experimental results for rigid environment: (a) position tracking
(b) force tracking.
Experiments have also been conducted using two decou-
pled four-channel teleoperation systems for performing the
same task. The system demonstrated poor contact stability.
The operators were mostly unsuccessful in grasping the tool
because of contact instability. Even in cases in which the
force gains were reduced to improve stability, the contact
between the tool and slaves were frequently lost due to poor
coordination between the operators. In summary, the coop-
erative controller provides a superior transparent response
in contact with the rigid environment and greatly facilitate
the coordination between the operators when compared with
decoupled single-slave/single-master controllers.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
While the vast majority of relevant reports in the literature
are concerned with single-master/single-slave teleoperation
2511
applications, this paper studied the problem of coordinated
control of multi-master/multi-slave teleoperation. The few
previous reports in cooperative teleoperation either ignore
the dynamic interaction of the slaves through the tool or
limit their scope to free motion coordination. This paper
incorporated the dynamics of master and slave manipulators,
operators, tool, and environment into an adaptive nonlinear
control approach. The stability of the closed-loop system in
the presence of parametric uncertainty and in contact with
flexible and rigid environments was proven through anal-
ysis. The controller establishes a desired position-position
correspondence between masters and slaves. It also pro-
vides the operators with a controllable virtual intervening
tool impedance. Simulation and experimental results demon-
strated that the proposed approach is highly effective in
coordinating the operation in a two-master/two-slave single-
axis teleoperation setting.
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