In this paper, various coordinated control schemes are explored in Multioperatormultirobot (MOMR) teleoperation through a communication network with time delay. Over the past decades, problems and several notable results have been reported mainly in the Single-Operator–Single-Robot (SOSR) teleoperation system. Recently, the need for cooperation has rapidly emerged in many possible applications such as plant maintenance, construction, and surgery, because multirobot cooperation would have a significant advantage over a single robot in such cases. Thus, there is a growing interest in the control of multirobot systems in remote teleoperation, too. However, the time delay over the network would pose a more difficult problem to MOMR teleoperation systems and seriously affect their performance. In this work, our recent efforts devoted to the coordinated control of the MOMR teleoperation is described. First, we build a virtual experimental test bed to investigate the cooperation between two telerobots in remote environments. Then, different coordinated control aids are proposed to cope with collisions arising from delayed visual feedback from the remote location. To verify the validity of the proposed schemes, we perform extensive simulations of various planar rearrangement tasks employing local and remote graphics simulators over an ethernet LAN subject to a simulated communication delay.

The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (MEL) 1 has been developing coordinated control technologies for multi-telerobot cooperation in a common environment remotely controlled from multiple operators physically distant from each other. Previously, we learned about how the transmission delay over the network deteriorates the performance of telerobots through simulations. To overcome the operator's delayed visual perception arising from network throughput limitations, we have suggested several coordinated control aids at the local operator site. The testbed facilitates experiments with physical robots for validation beyond simulation. This paper mainly discusses the details of the testbed and investigates the use of an online predictive simulator to assist the operator in coping with time delay over the network. Practically, a common data relay station is suggested to reduce the travel distance of the master data over the network and enable multirobot predictive simulation at one's master station. Operators control their master to get their telerobot to cooperate with the counterpart telerobot using the predictive simulator as well as video image feedback. Specifically, exploiting the audio-visual resources of the simulator, operators can detect a priori the possibility of collision and coordinate conflicting motions between telerobots. We have demonstrated an object rearrangement task by two telerobots and two operators via an ethernet LAN that is subject to simulated delays and evaluated the validity of the online predictive simulator in Multioperator-Multirobot (MOMR) tele-cooperation.