An Integrated Haptic Data Transmission in Haptic Collaborative Virtual Environments

Haptic collaboration virtual environment (HCVE) is an enhanced virtual reality space with haptic interface support. HCVE users are connected together over the network and are able to work together by using sense of touch, i.e. haptics as well as audio and visual interfaces. In HCVE, the communication of haptic data is challenging because of time-varying network conditions and extremely high data rate. To mitigate such difficulties, we propose a linear prediction algorithm and a buffering scheme which is an integrated scheme for haptic data transmission. The prediction algorithm is to minimize the negative effects from network delay, loss and jitter, while the buffering scheme is to easily synchronize haptic interaction. For the evaluation of our proposed schemes, we build an experimental test bed for HCVE. As the result, we observe that our schemes are effective in improving the quality of haptic experiences. The quantitative measurement results are presented.