Coordinated rate control of multiple telerobot systems with time delay

Abstract

A collision-free coordinated rate control scheme is discussed for multi-operator-multi-robot (MOMR) teleoperation using a network with communication time delay. However, the effect of time-delay would pose a more difficult problem to MOMR teleoperation systems and seriously affect their performance. In this work, the time-delay problems in remote collaboration through MOMR teleoperation are first investigated. Then, the scaled rate control method is proposed to cope with the collision arising from the time-delay in MOMR teleoperation system. We scale down the velocity of the slave end-effector when the possible collision is expected during the collaboration. To verify the validity of the proposed scheme, an experiment on planar block arrangement by two slave manipulators was performed based on simulation models.