Plug-and-Play Haptic Interaction for Tactile Internet Based on WebRTC

Abstract

Tactile Internet promises a widespread adoption of haptic communication over the Internet. However, as haptic technologies are becoming more diversified and available than ever, the need has arisen for a plug-and-play (PnP) haptic communication over a computer network. This paper presents a system for enabling PnP communication of heterogeneous haptic interfaces. The system is based on three key features: (i) a haptic metadata to make haptic interfaces self-descriptive, (ii) a handshake protocol to automatically exchange haptic metadata between two communicating devices, and (iii) a multimodal (haptic-audio-visual) media communication protocol. Implemented using WebRTC, the PnP communication is evaluated using a Tele-Writing application with two heterogeneous haptic interfaces, namely Geomagic Touch and Novint Falcon. Our findings demonstrate the potential of the system to be employed in any Tactile Internet scenario.