Concepts of Teleoperated Robots

This paper provides basic overview of teleoperated robotic systems and their characteristics. The aim of the paper is not to describe such robotic systems in detail such as suggesting actual hardware and software, but to provide basic information, which has to be considered during the design and usage of such robot. Paper is focused on general description of functionality, characteristics and applications of teleoperated robots. Overview of potential use cases is provided with description of potential downfalls. Means of communication with the robot are discussed and elaborated with respect to reliability and safety. Available types of human to machine interfaces and sensor systems are listed and described considering reliability, safety and quality of control. Especially safety issues are highlighted, because such robots suffer from the involvement of humans in the control scheme. This paper comes to a conclusion that it is of primary importance to consider safety measures and stresses vulnerability of whole system introduced by operator and means of communication. In this paper is further stressed that in case of lost communication teleoperated robot must be able to either safely continue its function or stop. Future research will be focused on improving teleoperation via virtual reality, further improvement of autonomous features leaving operator only to decide which actions to perform and cloud computing.