Stable, Safe, and Passive Teleoperation of Multi-Robot Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we present a unified framework to ensure the stability, safety, and passivity of a multi-robot teleoperation system in a holistic fashion. The proposed approach consists of encoding these three properties as constraints in an optimization-based controller using control Lypaunov and (integral) control barrier functions. The result is a stability-safety-passivity (SSP) filter implemented as a convex optimization control policy, which can be efficiently evaluated in an online fashion. The developed filter minimally modifies the teleoperation input in order to ensure that the robotic system remains stable, safe, and passive. The effectiveness of the developed approach is showcased using a team of mobile robots in a human-multi-robot teleoperation scenario.