A Study to Support Haptic Collaboration with Real Time Force Feedback over Wireless Networks

This paper presents an investigation into a new peer-to-peer wireless network architecture for real time tele-haptic operation in distributed virtual environments (DVEs). A novel force collaboration and position synchronization algorithm is developed in order to support wireless networked haptic interactions. The new peer-to-peer architecture is able to support haptic interactions over wireless IP networkes. Experiments have been conducted to show the performance of this with different wireless hopping. Experiments have also been conducted to investigate the threshold levels of QoS required (i.e. number of wireless hopping) for wireless networked haptic collaboration. Findings of the study are presented in this paper and it shows the challenges in conducting haptic collaboration over wireless IP networks. The wireless channel condition varies over time due to such factors as channel characteristics, the PHY scheme selected, time-varying interference, and the priority of services (QoS demands) from MAC/PHY layers.