CAREER: Passivity-Based Distributed Frameworks for Multiuser Shared Haptic Collaboration over the Internet

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

The main goal of this project is to develop theoretical foundations for robustly-stable and high-fidelity shared haptic collaboration among geographically-distributed multiple users over the Internet. For this, the project utilizes: 1) distributed architecture for real-time responsiveness of each user?s haptic feedback regardless of Internet?s latency; and 2) passivity (of total distributed architecture) as a means for robust-stability of haptic interaction with a wide-range of heterogeneous human users. More specifically, the project focuses and investigates the following three key research tasks: 1) discrete-time passive haptic simulation algorithms for consistent/scalable deployment of the shared virtual environment, particularly among (computationally) heterogeneous users; 2) haptically-convincing physics-based passive hierarchical model reduction frameworks to mitigate communication/computing burdens, particularly when the shared virtual environment is of large-scale; and 3) high-performance passive local replica synchronization frameworks over the Internet for crisp/stable shared haptic experience, and fundamental performance limitation given communication imperfectness. By providing systematic and theoretical frameworks, this project will significantly advance the current state of the art, which is largely heuristic, ad-hoc and qualitative. This project is also expected to produce new results/perspectives/frameworks for general haptics/telerobotics as well as for adjacent research fields. The theoretical foundations laid by this project will make many powerful applications closer to reality (e.g. virtual collaborative surgical training, pre-manufacturing product evaluation, virtual collaborative sculpting, haptically-enabled networked games, etc). Perhaps more importantly, this project may fundamentally change how we interact with each other in the cyberspace. Education/dissemination activities of this project will include: development of new hands-on and research-level robotics courses; student advising/mentoring, particularly for minority students; haptics summer camp for K-12, particularly for female students; seminars in local high schools and public demonstrations; project web site, international collaboration, and book writing.