A scheme for VR-enhanced bilateral teleoperation with time delay

In many practical teleoperator systems, particularly where the teleoperation is performed over a long distance, the communication between the master and the slave is subject to significant communication constraints. In particular, the existence of communication delay between the parts of the telerobot creates some of the most challenging problems in teleoperator systems design. One alternative approach to the delayed force feedback is to create a virtual environment (VR) on the master side that duplicates the essential features of the remote slave+environment interconnection. In this work, we present an approach to VR-enhanced force reflecting teleoperation in presence of network induced communication constraints. We present a control algorithm and a communication protocol that deals with teleoperation in presence of time-varying unknown communication delays and possible packet losses. For approximate recovery of the lost packets we propose the use of support vector machines (SVMs).