A case study of tele-operation system with time-delay

In this article we report experimental results and an evaluation of control and communication systems for bilateral tele-operation systems. The proposed system consists of simple mechanical parts, real-time control subsystems, telecommunication subsystems and network systems. The two mechanical systems communicate with each other via TCP/IP or UDP/IP network protocols, which produces appreciable time delay (transmission delay). Our system overcomes the degradation caused by time delay with robust control theory. By using the proposed method, we can construct stable bilateral tele-operation systems with simple control algorithms. We have implemented the algorithms on RT-Linux systems and made some experiments on the IP network systems of JGN (Japan Gigabit Network). We obtain a robust and stable tele-operation system against time delay up to 2 seconds and some probabilistic disturbances.