Dynamic bandwidth management for teleoperation of collaborative robots

In teleoperation of collaborative mobile robots different tasks or events require different bandwidth allocation. Thus, different rates of communication on each channel are needed for reliable and efficient task completion. For example, during navigation if obstacles are distant then the rate of video feedback can be reduced versus when the vehicle is approaching an obstacle. In order to efficiently teleoperate a swarm of mobile robots, dynamic bandwidth management is necessary for efficient use of networking resources. In this paper, we propose a general formulation of a management algorithm independent of the number or type of collaborating robots and independent of the collaborative task executed. The proposed algorithm accounts for the interesting events (IEs) occurring in the environment as well as for the changes in the quality of collaboration (QoC) of the swarm. This paper focuses on managing all the communication channels where commands, sensory data and video frames are exchanged. The proposed algorithm is validated by simulating the teleoperation of a pair of robots using a haptic device while providing visual and haptic feedback. Results demonstrate that improved network and task performance can be accomplished using dynamic bandwidth allocation.