Glossary

This page contains a small glossary of the terms that are more frequently encountered in the telerobotics literature.

Local site: The location of the human operator and of the robotic equipment the he/she uses for interacting with a remote robot.

Master: The robotic equipment at the local site through which the user interacts with a remote robot.

Remote Site: The location of the remote robotic equipment that can interact with the remote environment. The location in which the user at the local site wants to be telepresent.

Slave: The robotic equipment at the remote site through which it is possible to interact with the remote environment.

Communication Channel: The medium through which information is exchanged between local and remote sites. It can either be a dedicated transmission link or a general purpose communication network (e.g. Internet).

Bandwidth: The amount of data that a communication channel can transmit in a given period of time.

Telepresence: The impression of being present at a location remote from one's own immediate environment.

Transparency: The attitude of a telerobotic system of allowing a perfect telepresence

Telemetry: Measurements and information recorded from a remote device and transmitted for use at the local site.

Telesurgery: Use of a telerobotics system for allowing a surgeon to operate at a location remote from his/her location.

Video Compression: The encoding of real-time video so that it can be transmitted over a communication channel.

Audio Compression: The encoding of audio information so that it can be transmitted over a communication channel.

Stereo Sound: A method of sound recoding and reproduction using two or more audio channels to reproduce spatial depth in the sound.

Force Feedback: The transmission over a communication channel of a force information related to the interaction force of the slave with the remote environment.

Tactile: Relating to the sense of touch, but at a greater level of detail than that implied by haptic (e.g. texture detection).

Stereo Vision: A vision system which replicates the way the human visual system works, allowing perception of depth via stereoscopy.

Virtual Reality (VR): The creation and display of dynamic scenes and situations for providing a close enough rendition of the scene to give the impression to the users that they are actually there.
Bilateral Control: A control strategy to coordinate master and slave that exchange information over a communication channel. Within this control framework, the slave tracks the position of the master and the interaction force between the slave and the remote environment is reproduced on the master.