SeeMe combines modern IP communications with legacy circuit-switched ISDN/TDM infrastructure.

In a public demonstration at TechDay Aveiro in 2015, an operator remotely controlled a Robix robotic arm located in Lisbon. The system transported real-time communications over established ISDN circuits using inexpensive Linux-based gateways, rather than requiring IP packet routing through the circuit-switched network.

The architecture preserves familiar application protocols. SIP signaling uses PPP/IP/UDP/SIP, while real-time audio and video use PPP/IP/UDP/RTP. PPP carries IP across the ISDN bearer. Two 64 kbit/s B channels provide 128 kbit/s of gross circuit capacity when appropriately aggregated, with less bandwidth available to the application after protocol overhead.

SeeMe also demonstrates a broader Connect Things concept: remote robots, sensors, cameras and actuators can be connected through a telecommunications service that allocates circuit resources per admitted session. Android devices can provide a mobile operator interface.

This project revisits a working telecommunications prototype more than ten years later and asks whether modern codecs, inexpensive gateways and existing circuit-switching principles could support new operator-managed services for tele-robotics, telemedicine and industrial control.

The distinctive idea is not that modern 5G cannot control robots. It is that SeeMe demonstrated a practical alternative architecture using modern IP protocols over reserved circuit resources in a legacy public telecommunications network.

Project tags
ISDN, TDM, SIP, RTP, PPP, robotics, telepresence, retrocomputing, Linux, telecommunications

Project video
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAmLlT2YKjnTc8Lbkuw6jcg