Using Unity for master-slave tele-robotics

Questions & Answers
1

Hello

I am programming a multiplayer game in unity that would be in the form of a Master-Slave tele-operation system. Essentially, I have a multi-threaded system, with two threads -

  1. Unity update loop - 60-100Hz

  2. Robot update loop - 1000 Hz

So, in the single player setting, when I move the robotic arm, the cursor moves on the screen (Imagine that the robot is very expensive joystick that controls player motions). Now, I want to transfer this motion over the internet to another computer running the same game. So if I move my master robot, the slave robot should move in the same way and the slave player (on screen cursor) should move as well.

Now as far as the player motions are considered, Unity Multiplayer is enough to transfer that data. However, I cannot transfer the robot data as I need to maintain the sampling rate of 1000 Hz across both robots. Please note that it is vital that the robot data is transferred at 1000 Hz.

Any clue as to how to achieve this?

Thanks in advance

2

You can transfer the data at 1000 Hz, but Unity won’t be able to receive the data. There is absolutely no reason that you transfer data at 1000 Hz when firstly, it is completely unnecessary to have ANYTHING running that quickly, and secondly, if you can’t read 1000 Hz, you don’t send 1000 Hz.

The solution is to send at 60-100 Hz, which you regulate with the master, otherwise you’re just going to be permanently stuck syncing without actual output for the slave. But then again, the slave will have to ask for data and then receive, otherwise you’re going to have a laggy stack structure which probably doesn’t even work that well. All solutions that don’t have the same refresh rate are going to be inefficient, though.