Perceptually Robust Traffic Control in Distributed Haptic Virtual Environments

In this paper we present a traffic control scheme for server to client communication in distributed haptic virtual environments (VE). We adopt a client-server architecture where the server manages the state consistency of the distributed VE, while haptic feedback is computed locally at each client. The update rate of network traffic from the server to the client is dynamically adapted by exploiting characteristics and limitations of human haptic perception. With this, an excellent tradeoff between network communication efficiency and perceptually robust rendering of haptic feedback is achieved. Subjective tests with two users collaboratively manipulating a common object show a packet rate reduction of up to 99% from the server to the clients without deteriorating haptic feedback quality.