FoReCo: A Forecast-Based Recovery Mechanism for Real-Time Remote Control of Robotic Manipulators

Wireless communications represent a game changer for future manufacturing plants, enabling flexible production chains, as machinery and other components not to be restricted to a location by the rigid wired connections on the factory floor. However, the presence of electromagnetic interference in the wireless spectrum may result in packet loss and delay, making it a challenging environment to meet the extreme reliability requirements of industrial applications. In such conditions, achieving real-time remote control, either from the Edge or Cloud, becomes complex. In this paper, we investigate a forecast-based recovery mechanism for real-time remote control of robotic manipulators (FoReCo) that uses Machine Learning (ML) to infer lost commands caused by interference in the wireless channel. FoReCo is evaluated through both simulation and experimentation in interference prone IEEE 802.11 wireless links, and using a commercial research robot that performs pick-and-place tasks. Results show that upon interference FoReCo reduces the trajectory error by more than a 34.35% in both simulation, and experimentation. We also show that FoReCo is sufficiently lightweight to be deployed in existing hardware.