Analyzing the Impact of Commercial Video Encoders in Remotely Teleoperated Mobile Robots through IEEE 802.11 Wireless Network Technologies

Delivery of video encoded bitstreams in wireless networks is a challenging task due to different factors (node mobility, time-varying wireless channel, etc.) that put in evidence the lack of QoS support for this kind of applications. In particular, we are working with teleoperated mobile robot systems. Our purpose is to perform a study about the behavior of IEEE 802.11 technology to evaluate if it would be able to comply with the requirements of this application. So, we have developed a prototype that consists of one mobile robot with an onboard webcam and an IEEE 802.11 network adapter. The control station sends navigation commands to the robot and, at the same time, receives a video stream that shows to the user a frontal view of actual robot location. We will analyze the different components of the overall system, making special emphasis in video coding engines and network response.