A Data-Rate Aware Telemetry Scheduler

Abstract

Tele-operation of robots involves transmission of numerous telemetry data across often low-quality communication links. The available data rate of these links may vary over the course of a mission; however a human tele-operator must always receive at least the most critical data to safeguard the robot. This paper presents the Telemetry Manager, a data rate-aware telemetry scheduler that attempts to guarantee delivery of high-priority data from robot to operator even in the face of a low-performance communication link. In our scheme, data are prioritized by their "time to live" (TTL). Data with small TTLs are sent before those with large TTLs. We compare how capably the Telemetry Manager can achieve this performance to a control scenario where communication over a network link is not scheduled. The initial results show marked improvement in the number of high-priority messages received within their TTL as well as in mean transmission times of high-priority messages.