Stable Kinematic Teleoperation of Wheeled Mobile Robots with Slippage using Time-Domain Passivity Control

Wheel slippage creates control challenges for wheeled mobile robots (WMR). This paper proposes a new method for haptic teleoperation control of a WMR with longitudinal slippage by using the time-domain passivity control (TDPC) approach. We show the potential nonpassivity for the environment termination caused by the slippage dynamics. The utilized TDPC approach maintains the passivity of teleoperation system terminations through a passivity observer and a passivity controller at the environment termination. The teleoperation controllers are then simply constrained by Llewellyn’s absolute stability criterion for closed-loop stability purposes. Experiments with the proposed controller demonstrate that it can result in stable bilateral teleoperation with a satisfactory tracking performance with TDPC.