Preserving Operator Intent Under Actuation Constraints: Teleoperation of Manipulators with Coupled Transmissions

Overview & Synopsis

Teleoperation enables intuitive control of remote engineering robots for precision tasks. Existing direct joint-mapping methods have two limitations: independent motor saturation disrupts pitch-roll coordination in differential wrists, while fixed mappings struggle with abrupt tracking changes caused by gravitational loads and actuation constraints. We propose an actuator-constraint-aware leader-follower teleoperation method that jointly models leader gravity compensation, leader-follower joint mapping, and follower differential-wrist control. Specifically, we perform coordinated saturation in motor space according to the available gravity margin and integrate continuous angle unwrapping, feedback-state monitoring, and feasible-reference updates. This preserves the operator's motion direction, reduces coordination distortion, and suppresses recovery transients during saturation or brief communication failures. Real-robot experiments demonstrate smoother wrist trajectories and more continuous recovery than direct mapping.