Design and Experimental Validation of Sensorless 4-Channel Bilateral Teleoperation for Low-Cost Manipulators

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yamane, Koki, Li, Yunhan, Konosu, Masashi, Inami, Koki, Oaki, Junji, Tsuji, Toshiaki, Sakaino, Sho
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Yamane, Koki
Li, Yunhan
Konosu, Masashi
Inami, Koki
Oaki, Junji
Tsuji, Toshiaki
Sakaino, Sho
author_facet Yamane, Koki
Li, Yunhan
Konosu, Masashi
Inami, Koki
Oaki, Junji
Tsuji, Toshiaki
Sakaino, Sho
contents Teleoperation of low-cost manipulators is attracting increasing attention as a practical means of collecting demonstration data for imitation learning. However, most existing systems rely on unilateral control without force feedback, which limits performance in fast or contact-rich operations under severe sensing and bandwidth constraints. This paper demonstrates that practical high-speed bilateral teleoperation with force feedback is achievable on force-sensorless, low-cost manipulators by employing a sensorless 4-channel bilateral control framework. The proposed method integrates nonlinear dynamics compensation with a disturbance-observer-based velocity and external force estimation scheme, enabling stable position-force interaction while avoiding the performance degradation caused by phase-lagged velocity estimation commonly used in low-cost systems. By interpreting the observer structure in the frequency domain, we clarify the intrinsic coupling between velocity and external force estimation bandwidths and show that the observer tuning freedom can be reduced to a single cutoff frequency, providing practical, hardware-oriented parameter tuning guidelines for low-cost implementations. Real-robot experiments demonstrate stable and accurate teleoperation in high-speed and contact-rich scenarios. Furthermore, as an application, we show that incorporating force information in demonstrations collected with the proposed system significantly improves the success rate of imitation learning across multiple manipulation tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_06174
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Design and Experimental Validation of Sensorless 4-Channel Bilateral Teleoperation for Low-Cost Manipulators
Yamane, Koki
Li, Yunhan
Konosu, Masashi
Inami, Koki
Oaki, Junji
Tsuji, Toshiaki
Sakaino, Sho
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
Teleoperation of low-cost manipulators is attracting increasing attention as a practical means of collecting demonstration data for imitation learning. However, most existing systems rely on unilateral control without force feedback, which limits performance in fast or contact-rich operations under severe sensing and bandwidth constraints. This paper demonstrates that practical high-speed bilateral teleoperation with force feedback is achievable on force-sensorless, low-cost manipulators by employing a sensorless 4-channel bilateral control framework. The proposed method integrates nonlinear dynamics compensation with a disturbance-observer-based velocity and external force estimation scheme, enabling stable position-force interaction while avoiding the performance degradation caused by phase-lagged velocity estimation commonly used in low-cost systems. By interpreting the observer structure in the frequency domain, we clarify the intrinsic coupling between velocity and external force estimation bandwidths and show that the observer tuning freedom can be reduced to a single cutoff frequency, providing practical, hardware-oriented parameter tuning guidelines for low-cost implementations. Real-robot experiments demonstrate stable and accurate teleoperation in high-speed and contact-rich scenarios. Furthermore, as an application, we show that incorporating force information in demonstrations collected with the proposed system significantly improves the success rate of imitation learning across multiple manipulation tasks.
title Design and Experimental Validation of Sensorless 4-Channel Bilateral Teleoperation for Low-Cost Manipulators
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06174