Implementing and Assessing a Remote Teleoperation Setup with a Digital Twin Using Cloud Networking

Abstract

AbstractTeleoperation of robotic devices such as robotic manipulators is an important functionality for operation when access to a location is restricted. Teleoperation requires to both display relevant information to an operator in the local side, and to send control commands to the remote side, which only becomes more challenging when no direct connection (i.e., wired connection) is available. New digital representations such as digital twins increase the complexity of any teleoperation system, as digital twins tend to rely on virtual reality (VR) representations, combining heterogeneous data sources coming from both local and remote sides at different data rates (e.g., camera feedback, robot positions and control signals). A remote teleoperation scheme for a robotic manipulator was implemented and assessed. The teleoperation system includes a user requesting new positions for the robot’s end-effector from the remote side, and an inverse kinematics solver with the robot controller in the local side. A cloud-based networking solution to connect the robot (i.e., remote side) and the operator (i.e., local side) was implemented using a general internet connection available in Windows and Linux. Its functionality was tested and compared against a wired teleoperation scenario, showing that the average experience and performance of the cloud-based solution is the same as the wired scenario. All the configuration scripts for the cloud-based solution and the data analysis scripts are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6840823, to be used as a baseline for future developments.KeywordsTeleoperationControlDigital twinCloud computingNetworkingRobotics