Robotic Teleoperation: A Real-World Test Environment for 6G Communications

In the rapidly evolving domain of wireless communications, latency critically influences both user experience and the functionality of real-time applications. This applies particularly to requirements on upcoming 6G technologies in the industrial and health sectors. An experimental test environment has been established to evaluate the performance and latency of upcoming wireless communication approaches. It provides not only a platform to evaluate latency quantitatively but also offers optic and haptic feedback to make the latency visible and tangible to users. The test framework is realized with a teleoperation setup comprising two Franka Research 3 cobots in a master-slave configuration, controlled using Robot Operating System (ROS). While the master can be guided by a person, the slave mirrors the master’s motions and enables real haptic feedback to the master when interacting with obstacles. Using the ROS middleware for controlling the robots, the telemanipulator represents a demanding use-case for latency experiments due to its target cycle time of 1 ms. Experiments on wireless communication technology can be conducted by using the respective technology to establish the link between master and slave. Using an Ethernet connection as baseline the wireless connections can be benchmarked. The results of this work not only emphasize the lack of real-time performance of Wi-Fi but also highlight the limitations of the ROS middleware.