The next frontier in communications is teleoperation - manipulation and control of remote environments with haptic feedback. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) is primary. Realizing ULL communication demands significant redesign of conventional networking techniques, and the network infrastructure envisioned for achieving this is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). The design of meaningful performance metrics is crucial for seamless TI communication. However, existing performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance due to their inability to capture how well sensed signals are reproduced. We take Dynamic Time Warping(DTW) as the basis of our work and identify necessary changes for characterizing TI performance. Through substantial refinements to DTW, we design Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) - a new method for measuring the fine-grained performance of TI systems. Through an in-depth objective analysis, we demonstrate the improvements of ETVO over DTW. Through subjective experiments, we demonstrate that existing QoS and QoE methods fall short of estimating the TI session performance accurately. Using subjective experiments, we demonstrate the behavior of the proposed metrics, their ability to match theoretically derived performance, and finally, their ability to reflect user satisfaction in a practical setting.

Tactile Internet (TI) envisions communicating haptic sensory information and kinesthetic feedback over the network and is expected to transfer human skills remotely. For mission-critical TI applications, the network latency is commonly mandated to be between 1-10 ms, due to the sensitivity of human touch, and the packet delivery ratio to be 99.99999%, failing which can lead to catastrophic outcomes. However, with humans-in-the-loop, their dexterity and adaptability to varying responses to stimuli under different network conditions, measuring the performance of a TI session only with latency and packet losses are insufficient and presents an incorrect representation of the experience of the TI application. To develop an objective measure of the quality of TI sessions, we propose a framework that models TI applications as networked control systems, including humans-in-the-loop. We derive a closed-form expression for measuring the difference between the application performance in ideal and non-ideal network conditions. Based on Weber’s law of Just Noticeable Difference, we provide a metric called TIM to estimate the impact of the network on haptic feedback. We implemented TIM on multiple applications on a TI testbed to show that our approach is feasible and TIM strongly follows real subjective measurements. Further, we propose a channel compensation spring based on TIM, to alleviate the network conditions’ negative effects. We demonstrate the efficacy of the channel compensation spring in improving the user experience. We also present implementation notes for TI application developers.

The next frontier for immersive applications is enabling sentience over the Internet. Tactile Internet (TI) envisages transporting skills by providing ultra-low-latency (ULL) communications for transporting touch senses. In this work, we focus our study on the first/last mile communication, where the future generation WiFi-7 is pitched as the front-runner for ULL applications. We discuss a few candidate features of WiFi-7 and highlight its major pitfalls with respect to ULL communication. Further, through a specific implementation of WiFi-7 (vanilla WiFi-7) in our custom simulator, we demonstrate the impact of one of the pitfalls - the standard practice of using jitter buffer in conjunction with frame aggregation - on TI communication. To circumvent this, we propose the Non-Buffered Scheme (NoBuS) - a simple MAC layer enhancement for enabling TI applications over WiFi-7. NoBuS trades off packet loss for latency, enabling swift synchronization between the master and controlled domains. Our findings reveal that employing NoBuS yields a significant improvement in RMSE of TI signals. Further, we show that the worst case WiFi latency with NoBuS is 3.72 ms - an order of magnitude lower than vanilla WiFi-7 even under highly congested network conditions.

The next frontier in communications is teleoperation - manipulation and control of remote environments. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) being the primary one. Teleoperation, along with a host of other applications requiring ULL communication, is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). A significant redesign of conventional networking techniques is necessary to realize TI applications. Further, these advancements can be evaluated only when meaningful performance metrics are available. However, existing TI performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance. In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap. To this end, we propose a method that captures the fine-grained performance of TI in terms of delay and precision. We take Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as the basis of our work and identify whether it is sufficient in characterizing TI systems. We refine DTW by developing a framework called Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) that extracts fine-grained time and value offsets between input and output signals of TI. Using ETVO, we present two quantitative metrics for TI - Effective Delay-Derivative (EDD) and Effective Root Mean Square Error. Through rigorous experiments conducted on a realistic TI setup, we demonstrate the potential of the proposed metrics to precisely characterize TI interactions.

The next frontier in communications is teleoperation - manipulation and control of remote environments. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) being the primary one. Teleoperation, along with a host of other applications requiring ULL communication, is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). A significant redesign of conventional networking techniques is necessary to realize TI applications. Further, these advancements can be evaluated only when meaningful performance metrics are available. However, existing TI performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance. In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap. To this end, we propose a method that captures the fine-grained performance of TI in terms of delay and precision. We take Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as the basis of our work and identify whether it is sufficient in characterizing TI systems. We refine DTW by developing a framework called Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) that extracts fine-grained time and value offsets between input and output signals of TI. Using ETVO, we present two quantitative metrics for TI - Effective Delay-Derivative (EDD) and Effective Root Mean Square Error. Through rigorous experiments conducted on a realistic TI setup, we demonstrate the potential of the proposed metrics to precisely characterize TI interactions.

The next frontier in communications is teleoperation - manipulation and control of remote environments. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) being the primary one. Teleoperation, along with a host of other applications requiring ULL communication, is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). A significant redesign of conventional networking techniques is necessary to realize TI applications. Further, these advancements can be evaluated only when meaningful performance metrics are available. However, existing TI performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance. In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap. To this end, we propose a method that captures the fine-grained performance of TI in terms of delay and precision. We take Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as the basis of our work and identify whether it is sufficient in characterizing TI systems. We refine DTW by developing a framework called Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) that extracts fine-grained time and value offsets between input and output signals of TI. Using ETVO, we present two quantitative metrics for TI - Effective Delay-Derivative (EDD) and Effective Root Mean Square Error. Through rigorous experiments conducted on a realistic TI setup, we demonstrate the potential of the proposed metrics to precisely characterize TI interactions.

The next frontier in communications is teleoperation - manipulation and control of remote environments. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) being the primary one. Teleoperation, along with a host of other applications requiring ULL communication, is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). A significant redesign of conventional networking techniques is necessary to realize TI applications. Further, these advancements can be evaluated only when meaningful performance metrics are available. However, existing TI performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance. In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap. To this end, we propose a method that captures the fine-grained performance of TI in terms of delay and precision. We take Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as the basis of our work and identify whether it is sufficient in characterizing TI systems. We refine DTW by developing a framework called Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) that extracts fine-grained time and value offsets between input and output signals of TI. Using ETVO, we present two quantitative metrics for TI - Effective Delay-Derivative (EDD) and Effective Root Mean Square Error. Through rigorous experiments conducted on a realistic TI setup, we demonstrate the potential of the proposed metrics to precisely characterize TI interactions.

The next frontier in communications is teleoperation - manipulation and control of remote environments. Compared to conventional networked applications, teleoperation poses widely different requirements, ultra-low latency (ULL) being the primary one. Teleoperation, along with a host of other applications requiring ULL communication, is termed as Tactile Internet (TI). A significant redesign of conventional networking techniques is necessary to realize TI applications. Further, these advancements can be evaluated only when meaningful performance metrics are available. However, existing TI performance metrics fall severely short of comprehensively characterizing TI performance. In this paper, we take the first step towards bridging this gap. To this end, we propose a method that captures the fine-grained performance of TI in terms of delay and precision. We take Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as the basis of our work and identify whether it is sufficient in characterizing TI systems. We refine DTW by developing a framework called Effective Time- and Value-Offset (ETVO) that extracts fine-grained time and value offsets between input and output signals of TI. Using ETVO, we present two quantitative metrics for TI - Effective Delay-Derivative (EDD) and Effective Root Mean Square Error. Through rigorous experiments conducted on a realistic TI setup, we demonstrate the potential of the proposed metrics to precisely characterize TI interactions.