Design of single-operator-multi-robot teleoperation systems with random communication delay

Abstract

Multiple robots can be teleoperated by a single operator to provide enhanced capacity and efficiency on accomplishing complicated tasks. The design of this kind of systems is challenging because simultaneously tele-controlling multiple robots exceeds the ability of one single operator. The intelligence and autonomy of the robots need to be integrated into the system. Besides, the communication between the operator and the multi-robot system and the communication among the multiple robots are both subject to communication constraints like time delays and packet losses. This paper designs a non-time based method to realize the single-operator-multi-robot system with random communication delay. The system is designed based on the non-time based teleoperation method and a proposed perceptive coordination method. The random delay problem and the problem of simultaneously tele-controlling multiple robots by a single operator are resolved. Experiments implemented on a multi-robot system illustrated the effectiveness of the design.