Teleoperation

Network Latency

Network latency is the time delay for data to travel between a robot and a remote operator or off-board compute, typically measured as round-trip time. In teleoperation, delays beyond roughly 100-200 milliseconds visibly degrade tracking accuracy and force-feedback stability, and jitter (variance in delay) is often more disruptive than constant lag. Latency also constrains cloud-based inference for real-time control loops.

Why it matters for physical AI

Teleoperated data collection quality and the feasibility of off-board policy inference both hinge on latency budgets, shaping choices between onboard compute, edge servers, and cloud deployment.