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P-like controllers with collision avoidance for passive bilateral teleoperation of a UAV

Huiyu Sun (Southeast University, Nanjing, China)
Guangming Song (Southeast University, Nanjing, China)
Zhong Wei (Southeast University, Nanjing, China)
Ying Zhang (Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing, China)

Industrial Robot

ISSN: 0143-991x

Article publication date: 13 December 2017

Issue publication date: 2 January 2018

194

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to tele-operate the movement of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the obstructed environment with asymmetric time-varying delays. A simple passive proportional velocity errors plus damping injection (P-like) controller is proposed to deal with the asymmetric time-varying delays in the aerial teleoperation system.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents both theoretical and real-time experimental results of the bilateral teleoperation system of a UAV for collision avoidance over the wireless network. First, a position-velocity workspace mapping is used to solve the master-slave kinematic/dynamic dissimilarity. Second, a P-like controller is proposed to ensure the stability of the time-delayed bilateral teleoperation system with asymmetric time-varying delays. The stability is analyzed by the Lyapunov–Krasovskii function and the delay-dependent stability criteria are obtained under linear-matrix-inequalities conditions. Third, a vision-based localization is presented to calibrate the UAV’s pose and provide the relative distance for obstacle avoidance with a high accuracy. Finally, the performance of the teleoperation scheme is evaluated by both human-in-the-loop simulations and real-time experiments where a single UAV flies through the obstructed environment.

Findings

Experimental results demonstrate that the teleoperation system can maintain passivity and collision avoidance can be achieved with a high accuracy for asymmetric time-varying delays. Moreover, the operator could tele-sense the force reflection to improve the maneuverability in the aerial teleoperation.

Originality/value

A real-time bilateral teleoperation system of a UAV for collision avoidance is performed in the laboratory. A force and visual interface is designed to provide force and visual feedback of the slave environment to the operator.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was carried out at the Robotic Sensor and Control Lab, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. This work is supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation under Grant 61375076 and Research & Innovation Program for Graduate Student in Universities of Jiangsu Province under Grant KYLX16_0192. The authors thank all the members of the Robotic Sensor and Control Lab for their great supports.

Citation

Sun, H., Song, G., Wei, Z. and Zhang, Y. (2018), "P-like controllers with collision avoidance for passive bilateral teleoperation of a UAV", Industrial Robot, Vol. 45 No. 1, pp. 152-166. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-04-2017-0072

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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