In this paper, we investigate synchronization problem of nonlinear teleoperator in the presence of variable time delay. Compared with previous works, we relax the restriction of the communication delay range. Although approaches to the interval time delay can be found in many literatures, they are not suitable for nonlinear teleoperator due to the properties of robotic systems. We first investigate the synchronization of teleoperation system with interval time delay and make full use of the information of both the lower and upper bounds of delay. All criteria are presented in the form of LMI, which can be easily calculated by MATLAB (MathWorks, USA). Finally, numerical example and simulation are given to show the effectiveness of the main results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.