Towards an objective quality evaluation framework for haptic data reduction

High packet rates in telepresence and teleaction systems pose grave challenges to teleoperation over existing communication infrastructure like the Internet. To counter these issues, efficient perceptually motivated packet-rate reduction schemes have been developed. These schemes are conventionally evaluated for perceived quality via subjective user tests. Such tests are time-consuming, expensive and require precise control of experimental conditions. Computer modeling of telepresence sessions can, on the other hand, bring repeatability, ease of observation, definite control over system parameters and task description and fairness of comparison. In this paper, we present first steps towards a methodology and a framework to model and simulate a networked haptic interaction and evaluate it objectively for the quality of experience. Towards this purpose, we model the human control action and haptic perception process in teleoperation. Our results show that simulations of these models for a range of data reduction scheme parameters produce quality estimates whose trend is comparable to carefully performed subjective user tests.