Questions on Teleoperation

> For time lag, the only real solution IMHO is more
> autonomy. Most of the operations you are concerned
> with can be autonomous with little change required
> using existing technologies. You are not going to get
> past the time delay.

Yes. Operation becomes goal oriented rather than haptic. For going
somewhere one either selects from a menu something like "return to
chargeing station" or clicks on a three dimensional map that is
overlayed with selection (ie time, distance, power) criteria to select a
point in space for the tool to get to. Depending on how the
computational net is structured the nearest computing node guides the
real time activity of the vehicle. When things get tricky, and guidence
from long lag times is required then operations have to slow down
accordingly.

>
> > If you're operating a lathe, a metal foundry, a
> > welder, an orbital
> > transfer vehicle, a lunar dump truck, a lunar
> > loader, etc, etc, etc
> > I wonder how you compensate for the time lag?
> >

In a modern factory, CAD drawings are directly used by CAM machinery.
These are very interesting units to watch. The doors close on the
cabinet. The cooling fluid turns on mostly hiding the object being
machined and the automatic machinery completes the entire job without
human intervention to a higher degree of accuracy than is possible with
direct human control.

Mitchell James
www.InnerTransit.net