In this paper a generalized design and control method for teleoperation systems with communication time delay is presented. The design method is based on the state space formulation and it allows to obtain the control parameters for any teleoperation system where the master and the slave manipulators would be represented by nth-order linear differential equations. Through state convergence between the master and the slave, the control system allows the slave to follow the master inspite of the time delay. The method is also able to establish the desired dynamics of this convergence and the dynamics of the slave manipulator. Experimental results are presented showing the validity of the proposed design and control method. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.