Discrete-event-based planning and control of telerobotic part-mating process with communication delay and geometric uncertainty

This paper presents a new planning/control method to integrate the master and slave site in a teleprogramming system in the framework of a discrete-event dynamic system model. Specifically, a simple telerobotic part-mating task environment is modelled based on a class of controlled Petri net (CPN) by associating contact states between objects with state places, and the model is used as the source of a priori knowledge for successful accomplishment of the given task in the slave site. The a priori knowledge is transmitted from the master to the slave site and interpreted into the a priori knowledge base before the teleprogramming starts. Referring to the a priori knowledge base, the slave site interprets the succeeding symbolic commands from the master side and successfully executes the sequential commands to reach the final goal even in the case when an unexpected state transition occurs due to geometric uncertainties in the actual environment.