Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) Newsgroups: comp.robotics Subject: Re: 6 DOF Joysticks Message-ID: <4282@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Date: 7 Dec 90 18:29:23 GMT References: <18232@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1990Dec6.232210.2638@sctc.com> Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) Distribution: na Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA Lines: 24 In article gerry@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu (Gerry Roston) writes: >In article <1990Dec6.232210.2638@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes: > Ideally, you want the kinematics of the joystick (well, hand controller) to > match that of the robot. > ... tests done at JPL and elsewhere >have shown that to perform meaningful tasks, force reflection is >required and that time delay from your sensors (cameras, force >sensors, etc) will seriously degrade performance. Terms like "seriously degraded" seriously degrade our appreciation of some problems. I mention this because I'm convninced that earth-based remote control of, for example, a space station, would yiled a huge advantage in performance/cost payoff. So the question is, what did "tests done at JPL and elsewhere" really demonstrate? Consider that the internal sensor-brain-muscle roudtrip time of a human is of the order of 1/5 second -- so that when your brain tries to do anythig in the outer world, you have a delay time of this order. Now, suppose that the sensory-motor loop time of a remote control system were, say, 1 second. Then you could expect the human performance time to increase six-fold, so that it would be "degraded" by that much. My question: has JPL or anyone else shown that delays cause substantially more degradation than this?