First practical robot teleoperation achieved over commercial 5G

NTT DOCOMO and Keio University have successfully demonstrated the world’s first practical robot teleoperation over a commercial 5G standalone (SA) network using Configured Grant technology. This approach combines DOCOMO’s low-latency network slicing method with Keio’s Real Haptics system, which transmits tactile and force feedback between a human operator and a remote robot. The demonstration aimed to reduce wireless delay and jitter to enable stable, precise remote manipulation, which is critical for synchronized position, force, and speed control in teleoperated robotics. Configured Grant improves upon the standard Dynamic Grant by pre-allocating uplink communication resources to devices, eliminating the scheduling delay caused by the request-and-approval cycle. This reduction in latency and jitter was tested on DOCOMO’s commercial 5G SA network, with control packets routed through an edge server to enable real-time bidirectional force feedback. In experiments involving a hand-type robot performing a delicate grasp-and-transport task, Configured Grant increased force