Data transfer regulator for wireless teleoperation

Abstract

To achieve stability and transparency in bilateral teleoperation systems, it is critical to have reliable communication channels between the master and slave robots. Efficient data transmission algorithms have to be developed which take explicitly into consideration the characteristics of the applied communication medium. This paper introduces a new data transfer rate adjustment algorithm for bilateral teleoperation systems that includes video transmission from the slave side to the master side and uses wireless local area networks (WLANs) as a communication medium. If a high amount of data is transmitted over the wireless network which is used by the teleoperation system, significant delay, jitter and packet loss can be expected in the channels of the teleoperation system. Based on application layer measurements performed in the communication channels with variable delay, the proposed regulator adjusts the video transfer rate. The algorithm is designed using two cost functions which define the transmission quality in the teleoperation channels and the quality of the video displayed to the human operator, respectively. The obtained algorithm is able to maintain the expected value of the delay and delay variation in the communication channels of the bilateral teleoperation system at a predefined level. The performed real-time experiments show the proper behavior of the data transfer regulator on the teleoperation even in the presence of independent network load.