Robotics is about industrial automation. The hope is to increase the productivity with modern technology. A first attempt in building a robot includes teleoperation. A teleoperated robot has the same workload, there is no advantage available for the human operator. What the engineeres are trying to achive is to reduce the workload. They want to design a human-robot-interface in which a single operator is able to control a swarm of robot. The interesting fact is, that such an interface can't be realized in reality. The reason why is a bit complicated. But for the moment it make sense to locate the increase of productivity outside of a control problem.
Let me give an example of a transportation problem. A load can be transported either by a truck or with the railroad. Logistics with the railroad is more efficient. A single operator is able to transport lots of container at once. In contrast, a fleet of trucks is needed to do the same task. The example is interesting because no artificial Intelligence at all is needed to increase the productivity. It seems, that the amount is connected to the mechanical vehicle but not to the control problem.
Somebody may argue, that from a technical perspective it's possible to invent a swarm based teleoperation device. Similar to what it's known from real time strategy games, the human operator selects 10 vehicles at once and command them to move to the new location. So he has reduced his own workload. The problem with this example is, that such a swarm control is a synthetic example. That means, in a newly created game the swarm is controlled in such a way. In reality, no such control problem is available.
This produces the question which kind of domains are available in reality? This question goes into the right direction. Jobs which are done by human workers are organized with a certain principle. In most cases, a task was optimized already. That means, that no potential for further improvement is available. The best example is a airplane pilot. What he is doing is to act inside an existing system. The combination of the airplane together with the pilot produces a certain productivity. That means, the overall system has costs and provide a service. The amount of costs is not determined by the pilot but by the system in general.
If the human pilot is replaced by a teleoperated robot, the same productivity is the result. Perhaps this is the most dominant reason why teleoperation is not discussed very often in the literature. In contrast to real Artificial Intelligence it doesn't provide extra productivity.
Let us analyze what the untold assumption of robotics engineers is. They are programming a software which can control an airplane by it's own. The idea is to install such software in all the airplanes in the world and then the human pilots are replaced by the software. Without the software, around 1000 human pilots are needed and with the working software 0 humans are needed because the system can fly by it's own. This is equal to a great productivity increase. The only problem with this outlook is, that the engineers have struggled in doing so. They are not able to write such a software. In the laboratory it works great, but in a real airplane the software is not able to replace a human pilot.
The interesting point is, that this is not a technical problem but it has to do with a bias of the engineers. They are focussed on technical problems for example how to calculate the trajectory or how to setup a neural network. What the engineers ignoring is the history of failed automation project. They are ignoring automatic airplane software from the past and they belief they can reinvent everything from scratch.
What modern computers and robots can do is to distribute work between humans more efficient. A teleoperated airplane can be controlled from the ground. What modern technology can't provide is to reduce the total amount of workload. That means, if the pilot in the airplance should be removed, a human operator on the ground is needed to do the same job.
The most efficient workflow
Suppose, the idea is combine telerobotics with a high productivity. The first step is to identify in the economy high efficient systems. The best example is an electric train plus cranes who can unload and load the containers. Such a system is highly efficient because it minimizes the demand for human work.
Now a robotic system can be used to remote control the system. The teleoperation won't increase the productivity further but it will allow the human workers to do the job from any location. The train gets remote controlled and the cranes for unloading too. The resulting system will need some humans in the loop, but not very much. And the most important feature is, that it can be realized. It's not a fictional scenario what robots can do in 30 years, but it can be realized with today's technology.
What is needed is cloud based teleoperation to control an electric train which is fulfilling a logistics task. The human operator behind the screen is replacing the physical operator in the train.
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