A Predictive Approach for Compensating Transmission Latency in Remote Robot Control for Improving Teleoperation Efficiency

Yutaka Katsuyama, Toshio Sato, Zheng Wen, Xin Qi, Kazuhiko Tamesue, Wataru Kameyama, Yuichi Nakamura, Takuro Sato, Jiro Katto

Abstract: Transmission latency presents a significant challenge when operating remote equipment, such as a robotic arm. To address this, we developed a platform and conducted experiments to reduce transmission latency to near-zero levels. These experiments employed Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) to anticipate future motion trends, leveraging both the controller's movement variables and Electromyography (EMG) data from the operator's arm muscles. Our findings indicate the potential to decrease transmission latency by approximately 500ms. Additionally, our research confirms a direct correlation between prediction accuracy and the brevity of prediction time, suggesting that shorter prediction times yield more accurate results when using EMG. In the context of video transmission for a remotely located robotic arm, we applied video prediction techniques using the Predictive Coding Network (PredNet) to counter network latency. Our results suggest that these predictive methods can effectively compensate for a latency period of 300ms, thereby highlighting their potential for reducing transmission latency in remote robotic operations.