Teleprogramming: Toward Delay-Invariant Remote Manipulation

This paper addresses the problem of teleoperation in the presence of communication delays. Delays occur with earth-based teleoperation in space and with surface-based teleoperation undersea using untethered submersibles and acoustic communication links. The delay in obtaining position and force feedback from the remote slave arms makes direct teleoperation infeasible. We are proposing a control methodology, called teleprogramming, which draws on the experience in the development of supervisory control techniques and robotics over the last three decades and introduces a number of new ideas in operator-model interaction as well as the nature and content of the information being sent to the slave robot. A teleprogramming system allows the operator to kinesthetically, as well as visually, interact with a graphic simulation of the remote environment and to interactively, online teleprogram the remote manipulator through a sequence of elementary robot instructions. A key feature and contribution of this work is the fact that these instructions are generated automatically, in real time, based on the operator's interaction with the simulated environment. The slave robot executes these commands delayed in time and, should an error occur, allows the operator to specify the necessary corrective actions and continue with the task. We will in this paper introduce the overall teleprogramming control concept, describe its main components, and report on the preliminary results using our experimental teleprogramming system.