Passive event-based extrapolation for lossy haptic data compression in bilateral presence systems

A new lossy compression method is proposed for haptic (force, velocity) data as exchanged in bilateral telepresence systems. The method is based on the passive extrapolative compression strategy proposed in the work of Kuschel et al. (2006). The innovation is that the extrapolations do not have a stiff horizon, but are triggered by considerable changes (events) in the target environment. This enables longer average extrapolation horizons and thus, higher compression. Experiments are conducted using two DLR light weight robots. The results indicate that the method outperforms older implementations.