Abstract
This paper presents a frequency-dependent damping element, called an analog input shaper (AIS), to improve the stability of haptic interaction with virtual or real environments. High frequency inputs to a haptic interface, which usually occur in the collision with very stiff objects, can bring limit cycle oscillations and instabilities. In order to reduce these high frequency inputs and thus to improve the stability of haptic interaction, the AIS is added to the haptic system. Moreover, the AIS is applied to a passivity-based haptic stability control algorithm, called an energy-bounding algorithm (EBA), to increase the displayed impedance range by the EBA. Through scaled teleoperation experiments using an atomic force microscope (AFM), we show that the AIS can enhance stability during haptic interaction and consequently increase impedance range that a haptic interface can stably display. Also, we show that the AIS can alleviate conservativeness of the passivity-based haptic control algorithms.