Bilateral Teleoperation with Compliant 6-DOF Pose-and-Force Sensing

2026-05-18

AI Summary

This work addresses the high cost and inflexibility of existing bilateral teleoperation systems, which typically rely on expensive six-axis force/torque sensors, tightly coupled hardware, and kilohertz-rate control loops. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose a hardware-agnostic Cartesian bilateral teleoperation framework built upon the WOS middleware. Both master and slave sides employ low-cost, compliant six-degree-of-freedom pose-and-force-sensing end-effectors (Delta6), with the manipulators modeled as six-degree-of-freedom series elastic actuators (SEAs). A three-timescale decoupled architecture—spanning I/O, impedance, and communication layers—combined with multi-rate control enables hardware decoupling and unified control across heterogeneous platforms. The system demonstrates stable operation at 150 Hz on Lite6/FR3 robots, tolerating communication delays of 120±40 ms and 1% packet loss while accurately rendering virtual stiffness and exhibiting strong energy stability in passivity-like tests.

Abstract

Existing bilateral teleoperation platforms still rely on costly rigid six-axis force/torque sensors, tightly coupled leader-follower hardware, and kilohertz control loops. We present a Cartesian bilateral framework built on the hardware-agnostic WinGs Operating Studio (WOS) middleware, in which a low-cost compliant 6-DOF pose-and-force sensing end-effector, Delta6, is mounted on both sides so that each manipulator behaves as an end-effector 6-DOF series elastic actuator (SEA). The leader runs a damping-only admittance loop with a 6-D biquad notch filter; the follower realizes a stiffness-damping impedance through a position-based outer loop with a PID wrench-to-pose mapping. Three time scales (hardware I/O, mid-rate impedance/admittance, low-rate teleoperation messages) are explicitly decoupled, enabling the same application to drive heterogeneous arms. On a Lite6/FR3 testbed at 150 Hz, the system tracks stably under delays up to $120\pm40$ ms and 1% packet loss, matches the prescribed virtual stiffness in contact, and shows a favorable cumulative energy signature in passivity-style tests.

Problem

• bilateral teleoperation
• 6-DOF force sensing
• hardware coupling
• high-cost sensors
• heterogeneous manipulators

Innovation

• compliant sensing
• series elastic actuator
• bilateral teleoperation
• time-scale decoupling
• hardware-agnostic middleware