There are several options in specifying the action for robot control. Typically, robot motion is the natural choice since it is a readily observable quantity. However, applied force may be more suitable for tasks that involve contact with the environment. Moreover, many tasks that exhaustively interact with the environment typically require a specification of both motion and force simultaneously. The wave variable combines them into one quantity related to the power supplied to the robot. Therefore, wave variable may be used to specify the action. This helps the robot perform interactive tasks better than using motion or force alone. It also helps in creating high quality dataset of task demonstration since human perceives wave reaction as an additional modality to generate the wave action properly.

A novel control scheme based on wave variables for controlling the teleoperation system over the time-varying delayed communication is proposed. Regarding to the symmetric wave teleoperation control layout, the control is achieved by adjusting the wave variables based on the difference between the desired and the fictitious position, which is obtained from integrating the non-distorted wave variables. The resulting wave is then applied to the master/slave robots controlled with local PD controller. By this control scheme, the system is stable and the position difference of the master and slave is proven to converge to zero in the free motion case if the time delay is continuously differentiable. In addition, the slave-environment interaction force is reflected to the operator precisely when the static contact is made during steady time delay. This control scheme can readily be extended to the implementation of the teleoperation system in full task space SO(3) × ℝ3.

Remote surgery is one of the most desired applications in the context of recent advanced medical technologies. For a future expansion of remote surgery, it is important to use conventional network infrastructures such as Internet. However, using such conventional network infrastructures, we are confronting time-delay problems of data transmission. In this paper, a remote surgery experiment between Japan and Thailand using a research and development Internet is presented. In the experiment, the image and audio information was transmitted by a newly developed low latency CODEC system to shorten the time-delay. By introducing the low latency CODEC system, the time-delay was shortened compared with the past remote surgery experiments despite the longer distance. We also conducted several network measurements such as a comparison between TCP/IP and UDP/IP about the control signal transmission.

Several robotic surgical systems have been developed for MIS (minimally invasive surgery) including commercialized products such as da Vinci and ZEUS. We have developed a minimally invasive surgical system, which have carried out remote surgery experiments for five times at the writing time. In this paper, a remote surgery experiment, which was conducted between Japan and Korea by using the developed minimally invasive surgical system is described. Research & Development (R & D) Internet testbet, APII (Asia-Pacific Information Infrastructure), which consists of an optical submarine cable network KJCN (Korea-Japan Cable Network), was used. In the experiment, a laparoscopic cholecystectomy was successfully carried out on a pig. The network time-delays of control signal and images were 6.5 msec and 435.5 msec respectively. A comparison of remote surgery experiments using ISDN and the Internet was studied

In this paper, a method of force feedback augmentation to improve the force perception is proposed. Reaction force is amplified naturally according to the forceps action. In particular, the principal force components corresponding to the ideal reaction force directions of the current forceps action will be amplified. The other components are displayed without amplification. As a result, only the simple but significant reaction force patterns are emphasized. Complex behavior of the reaction force, which may distract or deteriorate the intended action, is attenuated. In addition, the PI gain scheduling local force feedback controller compensates for the inertial and gravitational force of the master manipulator. Thus the true reaction force at the forceps can be felt more realistic