Position and Force Synchronization Control of Master–Slave Bilateral Teleoperation Manipulators Based on Adaptive Super-Twisting Sliding Mode

Master–slave bilateral teleoperation systems face several practical challenges, including model uncertainties, time-varying communication delays, and environment-induced force disturbances. To address these issues, this paper proposes an adaptive super-twisting sliding-mode control scheme to achieve high-precision position tracking and real-time force-feedback synchronization. First, joint-space dynamic models are established for both the master and the slave manipulators, and a passive impedance model is adopted to characterize the interaction dynamics at the operator–master and environment–slave interfaces. Second, to attenuate measurement noise in the environment interaction force, a first-order low-pass filter is used to preprocess the raw force measurements, and a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is employed to approximate the environment torque online. Furthermore, a super-twisting sliding-mode controller is developed and combined with an adaptive law to compensate online for system uncertainties, including dynamic parameter variations and environment-induced force disturbances. The stability of the resulting closed-loop system is rigorously analyzed using Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through numerical simulations, virtual experiments conducted in the MuJoCo physics engine, and real-world hardware experiments. The results show that the proposed strategy achieves accurate position synchronization and force tracking while maintaining stable haptic interaction in the presence of bounded time-varying delays, parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances.