Data transmission using priority queue for multi-DOF haptic communication

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel data transmission method for a haptic communication through LAN. In a practical sense, the terminals, that implement the bilateral control, are connected through a number of concentrators. These concentrators have communication-bandwidth limitation. This limitation make it impossible to achieve both of short packet-sending period tp and low delay T, because short tp often causes a network congestion. As a result, the enough large tp, which never causes the network congestion, is often selected taking the worst traffic condition into account. However, this approach deteriorates the transparency of the haptic communication. To solve this problem, this paper innovates a priority queue (PQ) at the switch to reduce the large delay in case of the network congestion. As a result, highly transparent bilateral control through LAN is achieved. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by the experiment.