Sensorless Four-Channel Control Architecture Using Inverse Dynamics Modeling for Human-Scale Bilateral Teleoperation
For researchers in bilateral teleoperation, this work addresses the practical limitations of sensor-based four-channel architectures by eliminating costly force/torque sensors while maintaining high transparency, though it is an incremental improvement over existing methods.
This paper introduces a sensorless four-channel teleoperation architecture using inverse dynamics modeling, which outperforms conventional two- and four-channel schemes by improving position and force tracking, reducing operator effort, and increasing maximum transmittable impedance without external sensors, validated on a WAM bilateral teleoperation setup and a door-opening case study.
The four-channel teleoperation architecture is a well-established framework for achieving transparency in bilateral systems. However, its performance in human-scale teleoperation is limited by high inertia, modeling challenges, and reliance on noisy and costly force/torque sensors. This paper introduces a sensorless four-channel architecture based on inverse dynamics modeling. The controller is implemented and validated on a customized WAM bilateral teleoperation setup. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms conventional two- and four-channel schemes as well as transparency-enhancement methods, improving position and force tracking, reducing operator effort, and increasing maximum transmittable impedance without external sensors. A door-opening case study involving sustained whole-body contact along the manipulator further demonstrates the effectiveness of the method in realistic human-scale manipulation tasks.