Feasibility of cloud enabled humanoid robots: Development of low latency geographically adjacent real-time cloud control

Abstract

This paper explores the feasibility and proposes a method on how to obtain high frequency real-time controllers operating in loop with physical robot hardware over a geographically adjacent cloud server architecture. Having the cloud in the loop has many purposes including increasing computation, decreasing power usage, reducing overall robot weight etc. Today when robots use the cloud in loop it is typically for sharing information, high level planning, and other non-realtime tasks. All of the balancing and stability algorithms (the heart of the humanoid) stay onboard the robot. What if we could run high frequency real-time loops over the cloud? The better question is how would we do that? As with any real-time system latency is a big factor in the application and operation frequency. This paper shows that with a geographically adjacent server approach it is feasible to obtain high frequency real-time control in loop with with a physical robot over the cloud. The feasibility of such a system running in-loop on humanoids is explored and tested.