Input latency in machine control by humans over communication channels

This thesis focuses on input latency in machine control over wireless communication networks. Latency is one of the essential factors defining the performance of machine control systems. How the latency affects the performance of machine control systems needs to figure out. And how the key factors that affect latency (baud rate, payload packet size and operating distance) need to analysis.

In this thesis, a new system for machine control over wireless communication is proposed. The system’s latency performance is assessed. The developed system is tested in latency-sensitive applications. This thesis adopts an innovative analytical and methodological approach to the study of latency in machine control over wireless communication channels. For this thesis, 4G LTE and XBee radio were both used in experiments as the radio channels in a modelled machine control over a wireless communication system. After data was collected from the experiments, distributions for 4G LTE and XBee radio channel latency were created, and the best fit was expressed as a Rician distribution.

The latency sensitive applications in this research were used to determine the XBee and 4G LTE channels latency boundaries while the simulation was used to link latency to the performance of the applications. It was discovered that, in an object of interest (OOI) tracking system, latency in the wireless communication link can be considered a low priority when attempting to improve the performance of an OOI tracking system. In a drone navigation system, it is essential that latency in the communication channel is below 33 ms. In the forest scenario, the maximum safe drone velocity was found to be 4.4 m/s when using a 4G LTE communication channel.