Ground-Space Teleoperation of a Robot Arm Mounted on Engineering Test Satellite No.VII by Direct Bilateral Coupling under a Long Time Delay Condition

Abstract

A bilateral teleoperation experiment with Engineering Test Satellite No.VII (ETS-VII) was conducted on November 22, 1999. Round-trip time for communication between the NASDA ground station and ETS-VII was approximately six to seven seconds. We constructed a bilateral teleoperator that is stable even under such a long time delay. Several experiments, such as slope tracing task and peg-in-hole task, were carried out. Task performance was compared between bilateral mode and unilateral mode with force telemetry data visually displayed on a screen. All tasks were possible by bilateral control without any visual information. Experimental results showed that kinesthetic force feedback to the operator is helpful even under such long time delay and improves the performance of the task.