ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ WEBRTC ДЛЯ ДИСТАНЦИОННОГО УПРАВЛЕНИЯ ГОРНЫМ ОБОРУДОВАНИЕМ

Abstract

Currently a lot of mining companies, such as Caterpillar, Sandvik, Atlas Copco and Komatsu are developing solutions for machines remote control and mining process automation. The purpose of these technologies is to increase labor efficiency and safety. Solutions for remote control should establish secure connection and transfer data with low latency – this could be implemented with WebRTC technology. Several problems were revealed during open data analysis of Cisco, Sandvik, Moxa and Acksys remote control solutions – using of expensive IP-cameras, sophisticated network and security design. WebRTC could solve these and several other problems. WebRTC operation principles reviewed further: initial information exchange via signaling server, use of ICE for discovering shortest path between peers and establishing peer-topeer connection. This could simplify network design and allow to use more cheap USB cameras instead of IP-cameras. For security reasons WebRTC encrypts transmitted data with DTLS and SRTP algorithms. Encryption key fingerprints are exchanged over signaling server; after connection establishment, peers are exchanging keys itself over discovered route. But WebRTC specification does not define peer to signaling server communication, which may lead to breach in unsecure data channel, especially man-in-the-middle attack. To prevent this, software engineer should ensure that connection with signaling server is secure. Mining machine model was developed to test data transmission latency. In this model, Raspberry Pi single-board computer is responsible for wireless connection, video encoding and commands processing. Received commands are passed to Arduino controller, which operates electric engines controller. Three remote control scenarios were tested – model is near the operator and in direct line of sight; model is near operator, but not in direct line of sight; model and operator are far away from each other (over 1600 km), model controlled over Internet. Test results shows that transmission latency does not exceed 300 ms, which is suitable for real-time remote driving.