Time-delayed teleoperation for interaction with moving objects in space

Telerobotics has the potential to facilitate the repair of satellites in geosynchronous orbit by allowing human operators to interact naturally with remote objects. Time delays on the order of seconds make it difficult to provide immersive feedback to the operator, motivating the use of predictive visual and haptic displays of the robot and environment. A teleoperation framework developed for this scenario invokes a two-part environment model that predicts motion of objects in the environment, both in free space and during contact with the robot. When objects in the environment are in free space, a propagated model using delayed data provides predictive feedback to the operator. However, when the robot interacts with the environment, a local environment model that does not propagate delayed data is used. This reduces computational load and ensures stability during robot-environment interactions. Two experiments were carried out to test the teleoperation system. Results demonstrate the ability of the prediction algorithm to provide reliable feedback and improve operator performance before, during, and after robot-environment interactions.