Keywords: Control ,

This thesis is inserted in this telerobotic field presenting both a theoretical part and a practical experimental part. Haptic and telemanipulation systems have been presented and detailed focusing in particular on their control algorithms; different control methods taken from the already existing literature have been presented and, after the definition of a set of indexes related to stability and performances, a comparison has been carried out leading to the underlining of the pros and cons of each presented scheme.

- Chapter 2 contains the basic definitions for haptic systems with special focus on their control aspects, in particular this chapter deals with tendons/wires actuated devices and the aspects strictly connected to their peculiar structure.

- Chapter 3 presents the definition of the elements of a complete telemanipulation scheme, the main properties and the ideal transparency aim and, finally, a detailed and organic presentation of all the principal control algorithms presented in the literature on this topic.

- Chapter 4 defines stability and performances properties for a telemanipulation scheme and it proposes four different performance indexes in order to compare the algorithms previously presented in the benchmark example of two simple one degree-of-freedom (dof) linear manipulators.

Chapter 5 contains simulations and studies of a specific telemanipulation scheme, i.e. the intrinsically passive one; it holds with three dof manipulators, multiple input multiple output case, and enhances their performances using passivity definitions and concepts; this chapter contains also a passive approach for further performance enhancements in terms of position drift between manipulators.

- Chapter 6 deals with two experiments carried out during the Ph.D. studies: the ViDet device, a particular haptic device actuated by
tendons presented with its two different prototypes, and the telemanipulation device, built in order to test what above shortly described.

- Chapter 7 contains some conclusions related to this work and it presents possible future work to be done.

- Appendix A, finally, resumes the nomenclature of all the variables used in the mentioned chapters of this thesis.