Remote coordinated controls in multiple telerobot cooperation

In this paper, various coordinated control schemes are explored in the Multi-Operator-Multi-Robot (MOMR) tele-collaborative system through a network with time delay. Recently, the multi-robot cooperation has rapidly emerged in many possible applications such as the plant maintenance, construction, and surgery, because it would have a significant advantage over a single robot in such cases. Thus, time-delayed control of multi-robot system is highly expected to play an important role in remote operations, too. However, the effect of time-delay would pose a more difficult problem to the MOMR teleoperation systems and seriously affect their performance. In this work, first, we have built an experimental system to investigate the remote cooperation in MOMR teleoperation. Then, different coordinated control methods are proposed to cope with the collision arising from the time delay over the network. To verify the validity of the proposed schemes, we have carried out various experiments on planar block arrangement by two slave arms employing graphic simulators and a LAN subject to a significant communication delay.