AUM/UUV-a Virtual Environment for Undersea Telepresence

Time-delays and limited sensory feedback of remote telerobotic systems tend to disorient teleoperators and dramatically decrease the operators\' performance. To eliminate these effects, Innovation Associates will design a Virtual Environment for Undersea Telepresence (VEUTel) system. The VEUTel system will correct the problems associated with low band- width feedback by totally immersing the operator in a virtual reality simulation of the remote telerobotic environment. The VEUTeI system will intercept operator commands and provide instantaneous graphical simulation of the effect of the command on the telerobot, while relaying the commands to the remote telerobot. The system will insure the integrity of the simulation by using visual and/or range updates from the remote environment to correct the simulated environment, if discrepancies between the simulated and remote environment occur.