T–S Fuzzy Model-Based Single-Master Multislave Teleoperation Systems With Decentralized Communication Structure and Varying Time Delays

For the teleoperation system consisting of single-master and multislave (SMMS) manipulators, the Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy technique has been adopted in this article to represent the nonlinear system and to approximate its nonlinearities effectively. With respect to the master–slave interactions, a decentralized leaderless communication topology has been considered for the control design with time delays in signal transmission. The corresponding forward and backward delays among the master and slaves were assumed to be asymmetric and varying with time. Moreover, to improve the tracking performance of the master and slaves, the decentralized controller is implemented with force feedback strategy to form the closed-loop teleoperation system. For the stability analysis, the fuzzy Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals with some membership function dependent matrices were employed to guarantee the asymptotical stability of the proposed T–S fuzzy SMMS teleoperation system. By employing free-matrix-based inequality, some sufficient conditions were derived and expressed in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, numerical simulations are performed on flexible joint manipulators to illustrate the validity of the proposed strategy.