Challenges in VR-based robot teleoperation

Teleoperation techniques unite the human operator as the supervisor and the machine as the manipulator. Because both the human operator and machine are involved in the control loop and they are connected via the network instead of a direct link, the -development of a telerobotic system poses different challenges from systems involving machines alone. And these challenges become more severe when the telerobotic system is used for compliance tasks, in which simultaneous control of both position and force are demanded and contact with the environment is inevitable. In this paper, we discuss the challenges we may face in designing a telerobotic system. We then describe the networked VR-based telerobotic system developed in our laboratory and report the results by using the developed telerobotic system to execute several different kinds of compliance tasks.