Towards Deadband Control in Networked Teleoperation Systems

One of the key challenges in current bilateral teleoperation systems is the high data packet rate necessary for the transmission of the sampled command and sensor data. We present a novel, psychophysically motivated approach to reduce the packet rate based on a deadband transmission strategy. Data packets are only sent if the sampled signal changes more than a given threshold value. The threshold value is adjusted to match the just noticeable difference in human haptic perception. Missing data at the receiver are reconstructed by a modified “hold last sample” algorithm that guarantees passivity/stability. Our experiments validate that the proposed approach leads to a considerable reduction (up to 85%) of the packet rate without sacrificing the human haptic perception of the remote environment.