Astronautic Communication For Telepresence Applications

Numerous applications of telerobotics and telepresence are believed to have great potential to reliably and securely perform tasks in environments that are dangerous or inaccessible for human beings. Especially in the case of space flight missions certain operations cannot yet be automated but necessarily involve human interaction. In such cases, the communication between an operator at a ground station and a remote manipulator in space is critical for success. In this work, a novel simulator that allows for thoroughly analyzing the effects of wireless communication paths in diverse telepresence scenarios at low implementation complexity is developed and presented. The effects that significantly impact reliability and performance of data transmission are investigated; also new strategies for improving the overall system quality are proposed. The exemplary communication path between the DLR ground station in Weilheim and the International Space Station (ISS) is in the focus of our work.