Communication Delay Outlier Detection and Compensation for Teleoperation Using Stochastic State Estimation

There have been numerous studies attempting to overcome the limitations of current autonomous driving technologies. However, there is no doubt that it is challenging to promise integrity of safety regarding urban driving scenarios and dynamic driving environments. Among the reported countermeasures to supplement the uncertain behavior of autonomous vehicles, teleoperation of the vehicle has been introduced to deal with the disengagement of autonomous driving. However, teleoperation can lead the vehicle to unforeseen and hazardous situations from the viewpoint of wireless communication stability. In particular, communication delay outliers that severely deviate from the passive communication delay should be highlighted because they could hamper the cognition of the circumstances monitored by the teleoperator, or the control signal could be contaminated regardless of the teleoperator’s intention. In this study, communication delay outliers were detected and classified based on the stochastic approach (passive delays and outliers were estimated as 98.67% and 1.33%, respectively). Results indicate that communication delay outliers can be automatically detected, independently of the real-time quality of wireless communication stability. Moreover, the proposed framework demonstrates resilience against outliers, thereby mitigating potential performance degradation.