Bilateral Teleoperation Using ESP-NOW

This project involved conducting thorough investigations into the wireless communication protocol ESP-NOW using ESP32 microcontrollers and determining how to optimise its timing performance for different applications. One such application that I worked on was a bilateral teleoperation setup between two brushless DC motors, where an operator receives haptic feedback from the motor they’re controlling. For example, if the motor being controlled hits an obstacle and cannot move further, the operator will perceive an increase in resistance on the operating motor matching the resistance on the motor being controlled. Using ESP-NOW allowed this setup to be completely wireless and, based on timing experiments with the protocol, could theoretically work at distances of up to 30 metres without a significant drop in performance.