Characterization of delay-induced piloting instability for the Triton undersea robot

An experimental study has been conducted in order to understand the impact of communication delay on the ability to control the Santa Clara University Triton undersea robot for several primitive human-in-the-loop piloting tasks. Results show that typical piloting maneuvers are achievable with delays of up to 1.5 seconds although performance suffers in terms of the amount of unnecessary vehicle motion and the time it takes to complete a maneuver. Results also provide an initial measure of how the presence of a constant disturbance contributes to this degradation of performance. These results are being used to complement the development of piloting and automated navigation techniques suitable for telerobotic applications with communication channels suffering from significant stochastic delay and low bandwidth characteristics.