Gigabit Telerobotics: Applying Advanced Information Infrastructure

Advanced manufacturing concepts such as "Virtual Factories" use an information infrastructure to tie together changing groups of specialized facilities into agile manufacturing systems. A necessary element of such systems is the ability to teleoperate machines, for example telerobotic systems with fullcapability sensory feedback loops. We have identified three network advances needed for splitting robotic control from robotic function: increased bandwidth, decreased error rates, and support for isochronous traffic. These features are available in the Gigabit networks under development at Penn and elsewhere. A number of key research questions are posed by gigabit telerobotics. There are issues in network topology, robot control and distributed system software, packaging and transport of sensory data (including wide-area transport), and performance implications of architectural choices using measures such as cost, response time, and network utilization. We propose to explore these questions experimentally in a joint research effort combining the Distributed Systems Laboratory (DSL) and the General Robotics and Sensory Perception (GRASP) Laboratory at the University of-Pennsylvania. The proposed experiments should provide important early results. A detailed research program is described. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-93-11. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/422 Gigabit Telerobotics: Applying Advanced Information Infrastructure MS-CIS-93-11 GRASP LAB 344 DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS LAB 15 Ruzena Bajcsy David J. Farber Richard P. Paul Jonathan M. Sil~ith U11iversit.y of Penrisylvania School of Ellgir~eering arid Applied Science Con~pnter and Informat,ion Science Department PIiiladelpl~ia, PA 19104-6389