Bilateral Teleoperation System Using QoS and Secure Communication Networks for Telemedicine Applications

The next generation of telesurgical robotics systems presents significant challenges related to network performance and data security. It is known that packet transmission in wide area networks is a complex stochastic process; thus, low bandwidth as well as high delay, jitter, and packet loss will greatly affect the quality of service (QoS) of teleoperation control, which is unacceptable in this kind of sensitive application. Furthermore, a relevant but more serious issue is the network attacks, particularly denial of service as well as data alteration or disclosure. The main motivation of this study is to deploy suitable security mechanisms while preserving the QoS of network-based bilateral teleoperation. We propose and apply a protocol that secures our teleoperation system while preserving its real-time constraints. More precisely, we present in this paper a bilateral generalized predictive controller coupled to a QoS-friendly IP security protocol. The experimental results demonstrate that the telerobotic system is able to satisfy both QoS and security requirements of real-time and sensitive teleoperation tasks. In fact, our teleoperation security protocol provides priority treatment while preventing attacks and avoiding potential deadline misses due to increased security cost.