Internet-based teleoperation using wave variables with prediction

TLDR

Wave-based teleoperation over the Internet suffers from rapidly deteriorating performance as delay increases. The study aims to enhance wave-based teleoperation over the Internet by employing a modified Smith predictor, a Kalman filter, and an energy regulator to manage varying, unpredictable delays. The authors implement a modified Smith predictor combined with a Kalman filter and an energy regulator to predict and compensate for time‑varying delays in the teleoperation loop. Experiments show the system remains stable despite large remote‑model uncertainties and successfully teleoperates a master–slave setup between Atlanta and Tokyo.

Abstract

Wave-based teleoperation has been previously attempted over the Internet, however, performance rapidly deteriorates with increasing delay. This paper focuses on the use of a modified Smith predictor, a Kalman filter and an energy regulator to improve the performance of a wave-based teleoperator. This technique is further extended for use over the Internet, where the time delay is varying and unpredictable. It is shown that the resulting system is stable even if there are large uncertainties in the model of the remote system (used in prediction). Successful experimental results using this technique for teleoperation in a master-slave arrangement over the Internet, where the control signal is streamed between Atlanta (Georgia) and Tokyo (Japan), are also given.