Control of Master-Slave Manipulator Based on Virtual Internal Model

This paper presents an alternative control architecture of master-slave manipulators using of Virtual Internal Model. The proposed control architecture realizes the master-slave manipulator system with functions which assist operators based on the external information from sensors as well as bilateral feedback. In this paper, the control problem of a master-slave manipulator is formulated as the realization problem of the desired relation between a master arm and a slave arm. The virtual internal model, whose input includes the external sensory information, is used to describe the desired relation. The control system is designed so that the master arm and the slave arm tracks the desired trajectories generated by the virtual internal model.The proposed control architecture is experimentally applied to the master-slave manipulator system with force sensors. The effectiveness of the control architecture is illustrated through experiments.