Challenging the speed of light

Abstract

Haptic bilateral teleoperation technology aims to transmit the sensation of touch over the internet, enabling remote work for all. However, it faces significant challenges, including stringent latency requirements (sub 1 ms) for the Tactile Internet and the need for advanced models in Model Mediated Teleoperation. This work explored the feasibility of haptic bilateral teleoperation over long distances through a new framework that leverages live video and predictive haptic feedback. This framework was implemented on a real experimental setup where users draw with a haptic device controlling a remote robotic arm on a moving whiteboard. A user study was conducted on this setup which confirmed that the method is sound and revealed that force feedback latency requirements are significantly more stringent than those of visual feedback. In this application users did not perceive the application as more difficult at 50 ms network latency (110 ms visual latency) with user experience only degrading at 75 ms added network latency. These findings prove that through the Demonstrate Imitate Adjust framework, long-distance haptic bilateral teleoperation is achievable.