Design and prototype of a remote arm-wrestling system

We are furthering research on a remote sports system in which persons at different locations compete by communicating physical information such as positions and forces. In general, various techniques for a bilateral master-slave type of remote control seem applicable to a remote sports system. This is basically true; but it is also true that there are special issues to be solved inherent in a remote sports system. For instance, players at different locations are masters and also slaves, so the relationship between them must be completely symmetrical. It is important to clarify what information players must communicate and how the environment of each side should be identified. As a part of this approach, we built a remote "arm-wrestling" system in our laboratory. In the present paper, we explain the prototype system and describe some experimental results for verifying whether or how techniques for many types of master-slave based remote control systems proposed so far are effective. We also suggest some future subjects toward a remote arm-wrestling system with a better and more realistic presence.