I'm trying to educate myself on the state of the art in telerobotics. That's the technology that will allow surgeons to remotely control robotic instruments across high speed data links so surgery can be performed on patients in remote locations without the surgeon having to leave Palm Springs.
:-/
Except the application I'm interested in is more along the lines of handling and repairing hazardous materials and equipment. Not much surgical precision will be required as brute strength. The ability to grip and lift objects up to 500 lbs with 'claws', plus some specialized tools (like drills, pneumatic socket wrenches, etc.). The precision required would allow the user to pick up and manipulate something like
12 AWG wire. The seperation between the operator and equipment will be a few hundred feet at most, so the comminications link isn't a major issue (a dedicated fiber or 1Gb/s ethernet could be provided with no worries about hackers along the network).Who manufactures this kind of stuff? I imagine that the cutting edge in this sort of thing might be for handling nuclear materials, thus making it somewhat classified. Not to worry. I'm not building bombs in my garage (that project is complete).