Co-operative control of internet based multi-robot systems with force reflection

With the rapid development of information technology, Internet has evolved from a simple data-sharing media to an amazing information world where people can enjoy different kinds of services. Recently, the use of the Internet has been expanded to the field of automation, i.e. using the Internet as a tool to control equipment located at remote sites. This paper presents a cooperative robot system consisting of a robot hand and a mobile robot carrying a stereo vision, which can be tele-operated by operators at different sites via the Internet. To overcome the instability and reliability problem caused by the random time delay of the Internet communication, we adopt an event as the reference for controller design of the system. A vision-based method is adopted to maintain interactions among the operations. Results obtained in teleoperation experiments among Hong Kong, the mainland China, and USA will be demonstrated to confirm the usefulness and effectiveness of the developed method and system.