Implementation and investigation of internet-based teleoperation of a mobile robot using wave variable approach

Abstract

In the present paper, the wave variable method is applied for internet-based teleoperation of a mobile robot in practice. In the proposed setup, a force feedback joystick is employed as a haptic device on the master side. In order to compensate for large time delays of transmitting data and have better transparency, a Virtual Reality Simulator (VRS) model was designed using VRML builder® embedded with Matlab®. An open architecture package was developed using Matlab, Simulink®, and xPC target® that handles real-time control of the mobile robot through the internet as well as simulation tasks. xPC target has hardware in-the-loop (HIL) property, providing advantages such as ease of use, reliability, and flexibility. With this open package various controllers for the system can easily be investigated. As a case study, a Khepera II mobile robot is considered and several experiments with diverse scenarios are carried out. Simulation and experimental results show that teleoperation of the mobile robot using the wave variable technique is not efficient in terms of internet delay compensation.