Intelligent image fragmentation for teleoperation over delayed low-bandwidth links

When performing teleoperation in a delayed environment it is recognized that providing the operator with a simulation of the remote environment will improve performance by insulating him or her from the delay. However, while this simulation provides the primary display, the provision of real visual images from the remote site is still desirable to assist the operator in diagnosing and recovering from unexpected events. This paper considers a teleoperation environment in which the delay is too great to permit direct operator control of remote cameras while the bandwidth is too small to permit direct transmission of remote site imagery. The system proposed uses models of the environment, task action and remote cameras to predict that fragment of the available imagery would best assist the operator were an error to occur. The system has been used successfully for performing real world intervention in cases where the operator and remote site were physically separated by 500 km, the communications time delay was in excess of 10 seconds and available bandwidths were software-limited to be on the order of 10 kbits/second.