Traffic engineering for emerging telerobotic services

加拿大正在成为远程医疗和远程机器人服务的世界领导者。2003年，世界上第一个远程机器人辅助的互联网手术在加拿大进行，由汉密尔顿麦克马斯特大学最小接入手术中心（CMAS）的Anvari医生和安大略省北湾的一名患者通过使用由加拿大贝尔企业（BCE）管理的CISCO MPLS和VPN技术的网络进行。加拿大航天局和美国国家航空航天局也与麦克马斯特大学的CMAS合作，开展了一个名为“美国宇航局极端环境任务操作”（NEEMO-9）的项目，目的是评估远程机器人手术在未来太空任务中的前景。遥控机器人也被用于加拿大北部的自动化矿山，有人猜测高压水下遥控采矿，作为一种从恶劣环境中回收更多资源的手段，对人类生命的风险更小。虽然新兴的远程机器人服务可能会对我们的生活方式和未来的经济产生潜在的重大影响，但在这种服务能够大规模提供之前，还存在一些关键挑战。远程机器人系统的控制对网络延迟高度敏感：控制系统通常可以容忍较小的固定网络延迟，而任何高度可变的网络延迟通常会使远程机器人控制无效。流量工程可以被非正式地定义为使用计算机模型来规划、部署和管理互联网上的端到端连接，同时满足端到端带宽、延迟、延迟抖动、可靠性和可用性的上限和下限。该发现基金将探索有线和无线网络上的“流量工程”主题，以支持重要的新兴远程医疗和远程机器人服务。特别地，这个应用程序将侧重于交换机调度算法，以消除互联网中几乎所有可避免的可变延迟（延迟抖动）。

Canada is emerging as a world leader in Telemedicine and Telerobotic  services. The world's first telerobotic-assisted operation over the Internet was performed in Canada in 2003, between Dr. Anvari of McMaster University's Center for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) in Hamilton, and a patient in North Bay Ontario, over a network using CISCO MPLS and VPN technologies managed by Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE). The Canadian Space Agency and the US NASA have also partnered with McMaster's CMAS in a project entitled 'NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation' - (NEEMO-9), with the goal to assess the prospect of Telerobotic Surgery in future space missions. Telerobotics is also being exploited in automated mines in northern Canada, and there is speculation of high-pressure under-water Telerobotic Mining, as a means of recovering more resources from harsh environments with less risk to human life.While emerging Telerobotic Services may have a potentially significant impact on our way of life and our future economy, there are several key challenges before such services can be delivered on a wide scale basis. The control of telerobotic systems is highly sensitive to the network delay: a small fixed network delay can usually be tolerated in the control system, while any highly variable network delay will usually render telerobotic control ineffective. Traffic Engineering can be informally defined as the use of computer models to plan, deploy and manage end-to-end connections over the Internet, while meeting upper and lower bounds on the end-to-end bandwidth, delay, delay jitter, reliability and availability. This discovery grant will explore the topic of 'Traffic Engineering' over wired and wireless networks to support important emerging Telemedicine and Telerobotic services. In particular, this application will focus on switch scheduling algorithms to eliminate virtually all avoidable variable delays (delay jitter) in the Internet.