article

Perception-based traffic control for shared haptic virtual environments

Authors:

Clemens Schuwerk,

Giulia Paggetti,

Rahul Chaudhari,

Eckehard SteinbachAuthors Info & Claims

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Volume 23, Issue 3

Pages 320 - 338

https://doi.org/10.1162/PRES_a_00196

Published: 01 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Shared Haptic Virtual Environments (SHVEs) are often realized using a client—server communication architecture. In this case, a centralized physics engine, running on the server, is used to simulate the object-states in the virtual environment (VE). At the clients, a copy of the VE is maintained and used to render the interaction forces locally, which are then displayed to the human through a haptic device. While this architecture ensures stability in the coupling between the haptic device and the virtual environment, it necessitates a high number of object-state update packets transmitted from the server to the clients to achieve satisfactory force feedback quality. In this paper, we propose a perception-based traffic control scheme to reduce the number of object-state update packets by allowing a variable but not perceivable object-state error at the client. To find a balance between packet rate reduction and force rendering fidelity, our approach uses different error thresholds for the visual and haptic modality, where the haptic thresholds are determined by psychophysical experiments in this paper. Force feedback quality is evaluated with subjective tests for a variety of different traffic control parameter settings. The results show that the proposed scheme reduces the packet rate by up to 97%, compared to communication approaches that work without data reduction. At the same time, the proposed scheme does not degrade the haptic feedback quality significantly. Finally, it outperforms well-known dead reckoning, commonly used in visual-only distributed applications.

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Cited By

Rakhsha RConstantinescu D(2015)Average-position coordination for distributed multi-user networked haptic cooperationJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5898/JHRI.4.3.Rakhsha4:3(62-75)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5898/JHRI.4.3.Rakhsha
Schuwerk CXu XChaudhari RSteinbach E(2015)Compensating the Effect of Communication Delay in Client-Server--Based Shared Haptic Virtual EnvironmentsACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP)10.1145/283517613:1(1-22)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2835176

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cover image Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments Volume 23, Issue 3

Summer 2014

104 pages

ISSN:1054-7460

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MIT Press

Cambridge, MA, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 October 2014

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Cited By

Rakhsha RConstantinescu D(2015)Average-position coordination for distributed multi-user networked haptic cooperationJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5898/JHRI.4.3.Rakhsha4:3(62-75)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5898/JHRI.4.3.Rakhsha
Schuwerk CXu XChaudhari RSteinbach E(2015)Compensating the Effect of Communication Delay in Client-Server--Based Shared Haptic Virtual EnvironmentsACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP)10.1145/283517613:1(1-22)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2835176

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