Case Study: Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieves resilient, low‑latency rover communications and NASA Robo‑Ops placement with Peplink

Peplink Helps MIT Rover Place in NASA Competition!

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Robotics Team faced the challenge of reliably tele-operating a planetary rover in NASA’s Robo-Ops competition: they needed low-latency, redundant cellular links that prevented session drops in dead spots and provided enough bandwidth for high-quality, lag-free video. To address this, they partnered with Peplink and deployed Pepwave MAX On-The-Go and Pepwave MAX HD2 Mini units together with a Peplink Balance 580, leveraging Peplink’s SpeedFusion bonding technology.

Peplink’s solution bonded two 4G LTE connections into an “Unbreakable” VPN so packets were load-balanced and failed over at the packet level, keeping rover and mission control on the same LAN for easy software work and real-time monitoring of throughput, packet loss, and latency. The setup eliminated reconnections during link failures, preserved session persistence during a critical cellular dead spot, increased bandwidth and reliability for video, and helped MIT score a close second in the competition — outcomes the MIT team credited to Peplink and its SpeedFusion technology.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology