Modeling and control aspects of long distance telesurgical applications

There is an increasing need to support telemedicine with advanced technology. Currently, long distance telesurgical systems are only used on Earth for research purposes, but the military and the space agencies are interested in the spatial extension of effective surgical treatment through remote teleoperation. One of the major limitations of future systems is the communication lag time. In the case of the envisioned human exploratory space missions to Moon and Mars, the signal latency can be several seconds or even minutes. This paper deals with theoretical and practical aspects of the problem. Modeling approaches are discussed, proposing simplified human and machine representations to accommodate long distance telesurgical applications. Further, classical control methods are presented based on cascade control, focusing on teleoperation. A suitable controller can be designed with an empirical controller of the inner loop, based on Kessler methods, while the outer loop can be based on predictive control.