Investigation of network issues for distributed haptic virtual environment applications

This paper describes the effects of network on the performance of distributed haptic virtual environments (DHVE) and an experimental platform design for this purpose. On this platform, a network infrastructure (Gigabit-Ethernet-based) is installed for developing DHVEs and conducting experiments for evaluation purposes. This is part of an on-going project, which develops technologies to support multisensory communication over IP-based networks. The results of this work will assist system developers in providing multimodal interaction in distributed virtual environments.