Bio-Inspired Teleoperation Control: Unified Rapid Tracking, Compliant and Safe Interaction.

Abstract

In robotic teleoperation, the simultaneous realization of rapid tracking, compliance, and safe interaction presents a fundamental control challenge. This challenge stems from a critical trade-off: high-stiffness controllers achieve rapid tracking but compromise safety during physical interactions, whereas low-stiffness impedance controllers ensure compliant and safe interactions at the expense of responsiveness. To address this conflict, this study proposes a bio-inspired teleoperation control method (BITC) that integrates human withdrawal reflex mechanisms and the nonlinear stiffness characteristics of shear-thickening fluids. BITC features a dynamic force-feedback-driven collision reflex strategy, enabling rapid detection and disengagement from unintended contacts. Additionally, a nonlinear compliance control module is proposed to achieve both force fidelity during initial contact and adaptive stiffness modulation during progressively deeper contact in an emergency. By integrating full-state feedback tracking, the BITC teleoperation control framework is implemented to unify the performance of rapid tracking, compliance, and safety. Three experiments are conducted to demonstrate that the BITC method achieves accurate tracking performance, ensures compliant behavior during deep contact while maintaining force fidelity during initial contact, and enables safe reflexion for collision, respectively. The method is also validated to reduce peak contact forces by approximately 60% and minimizes contact duration to less than 120 ms, presenting comprehensive teleoperation performance.