1. Computer-aided teleoperation (CAT) with force feedback: control command

1.1 Introduction

The special feature of the control of force feedback teleoperation systems is that it introduces the operator (and the environment) into the control loop. This has an enormous impact on the IT architecture, as well as on the control laws. The system's operational safety, and therefore the safety of the operator and the environment (which, in the case of telesurgery, can also be a human being), is the basic constraint for the design and tuning of a teleoperation system. The automatician's famous "performance/robustness" compromise is of course still relevant to the control of remote handling systems. Nevertheless, specific techniques for analyzing and designing control laws are used to address the particular problem of teleoperation (§