Haptic Data Communication Research Articles

Experimental evaluation of haptic data communication with prediction

The transmission of haptic data is relatively challenging in multimedia communication. In this research study, the methods are presented for exploiting the properties of human haptic perception for data reduction of haptic data transmission. Packet-switched communication of haptic data is characterized by high packet rates on the communication channel. The quality of the internet-based haptic tele-control/tele-presence systems is highly dependent on the quality of the communication channel between the operator and the remote site, and on the delay jitter in the data exchange. The proposed research work is evaluated experimentally using a Geomagic Touch (previously PHANTOM Sensable Omni) haptic device with a sphere as a virtual model. Four experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed research study. In the first experiment the JND Weber’s law is applied on sent force values only, while in the second experiment, the force calculation algorithm has been modified to include human movement velocity. The third experiment discusses the use of JND on the sent velocity values. The evaluation of the human’s perception shows that the proposed modification to the basic dead-band approach highly reduces the number of sent packets with minimal disturbance in haptic feeling. Further enhancements using prediction techniques have also been introduced in the fourth experimental evaluation. The linear predictions are added to the above proposed reduction methods. Combining the dead-band approach with a fast, configurable and accurate prediction algorithm enables a significant reduction in the amount of data sent across the network. The reduction is estimated to be 85%, while preserving the original data structure.

Toward Haptic Communications Over the 5G Tactile Internet

Touch is currently seen as the modality that will complement audition and vision as a third media stream over the Internet in a variety of future haptic applications which will allow full immersion and that will, in many ways, impact society. Nevertheless, the high requirements of these applications demand networks which allow ultra-reliable and low-latency communication for the challenging task of applying the required quality of service for maintaining the user’s quality of experience at optimum levels. In this survey, we enlist, discuss, and evaluate methodologies and technologies of the necessary infrastructure for haptic communication. Furthermore, we focus on how the fifth generation of mobile networks will allow haptic applications to take life, in combination with the haptic data communication protocols, bilateral teleoperation control schemes and haptic data processing needed. Finally, we state the lessons learned throughout the surveyed research material along with the future challenges and infer our conclusions.

An Applicable Platform for Web Interactive Content Hapticization

Haptic technology again receives extensive attentions recently by virtue of improvement on Internet Technology. This paper presents an applicable platform for Haptics by employing physical features of sense-of-touch through electromechanical devices and the latest attractive HTML standard specified by W3C, aims at offering new attributes and reliable communications with the ease of use for web content. In addition, the proposed platform demonstrates its significance on wrapping up fundamental rendering methodologies including Haptics and web graphical content, is a step forward in supporting study of all fields related to web-based interactive content (e.g., Haptics researchers, physicists, software engineers, and web designers). Finally, we provide a conceptual example of proposed platform and prove its proficiency on haptic data communication. The results of the experimental evaluations highlight the effectiveness, stableness, affordance and extensibility for future research.

Combining Contact Models With Perceptual Data Reduction for Efficient Haptic Data Communication in Networked VEs

In cooperative networked virtual environments, haptic rendering enables joint haptic interaction with virtual objects and, thus, shared touch experiences among multiple users. In case of an underlying packet-based communication network (e.g., the Internet), minimizing the end-to-end delay, with the goal of preventing instability of the involved control loops, results in high packet rates. Previously proposed perceptual data reduction approaches address this challenge and satisfy the strict delay constraints. However, significantly increased packet rates still occur during contact events. We present a novel event-based coding scheme based on a distributed haptic-rendering framework that integrates model-based distributed haptic rendering with perceptual data reduction. We also present a comprehensive haptic contact model for signals with multiple degrees of freedom. Furthermore, we show that the integration of event-triggered force transient models from event-based haptics into our local contact model is instrumental for generating convincing haptic feedback. Psychophysical experiments reveal that the approach presented herein allows us to push the data reduction performance beyond what is normally achievable by perceptual data reduction schemes alone while significantly improving the quality of haptic contact feedback.

Perception-Based Data Reduction and Transmission of Haptic Data in Telepresence and Teleaction Systems

We present a novel approach for the transmission of haptic data in telepresence and teleaction systems. The goal of this work is to reduce the packet rate between an operator and a teleoperator without impairing the immersiveness of the system. Our approach exploits the properties of human haptic perception and is, more specifically, based on the concept of just noticeable differences. In our scheme, updates of the haptic amplitude values are signaled across the network only if the change of a haptic stimulus is detectable by the human operator. We investigate haptic data communication for a 1 degree-of-freedom (DoF) and a 3 DoF teleaction system. Our experimental results show that the presented approach is able to reduce the packet rate between the operator and teleoperator by up to 90% of the original rate without affecting the performance of the system.