Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Medium: Rethinking Multi-User VR - Jointly Optimized Representation, Caching and Transport

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Interactive Virtual Reality (VR) on wirelessly-connected and resource-constrained devices has important applications in education and healthcare. Supporting such VR applications is challenging due to the high data volume and stringent latency requirements. This project takes a novel holistic approach towards robust and manageable multi-user VR application support. The project jointly develops data representations, algorithms, protocols, and a prototype system that enhance the user quality of experience in collaborative, wireless VR applications, while reducing the requirements for network bandwidth, and for device storage and computation. Central to the approach is exploiting "edge cloud" resources that are near a user or group of users. The edge cloud works in concert with user devices and the more remote cloud to optimize user experience, with robustness to network variability and temporary outages. The processing tasks among the edge, remote cloud, and user devices are orchestrated to best exploit the lower latency between the users and the edge.The project makes high-quality VR accessible to more users, with fewer hardware and network requirements, enabling interactive visualization in domains such as education and healthcare at scales not previously possible. The proposed research will contribute to the general area of increasing user quality of experience at a low cost for high-volume, latency-critical workloads. The work will contribute strategies for data representation, caching, and transport among wirelessly-connected thin clients, a nearby edge cloud, and a remote cloud. The project will disseminate well-documented software and educational material. The software prototypes will be used to recruit under-represented minorities in computer science and engineering at all levels, and to support joint research projects and summer internships for undergraduates.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.