Coping with delays—controlling robot manipulators underwater

Abstract

Examines work on the development of an undersea remotely operated vehicle which is both unmanned and untethered. Outlines the difficulty of the only suitable long‐range underwater communication system being an acoustic link which has a very low bandwidth and a very large delay. The teleprogramming system seeks to overcome this difficulty by creating a computer simulation of the remote environment and allowing the operator to perform his task entirely within that simulated world. Describes the operator station, command generation to the ROV, the detection of errors and the hardware implementation. Concludes that the teleprogramming systems provides a means of performing tasks efficiently, even when the communication between operator and remote site occurs via a low bandwidth, high delay, communications link.