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

该项目的主要目标是开发理论基础，在互联网上的地理分布的多个用户之间的鲁棒稳定和高保真共享触觉协作。 为此，该项目利用：1）分布式架构的实时响应每个用户？的触觉反馈，无论互联网？s潜伏期;以及2）被动性（整个分布式体系结构的被动性）作为与大范围的异质人类用户的触觉交互的鲁棒稳定性的手段。 更具体地说，该项目的重点和研究以下三个关键的研究任务：1）离散时间被动触觉仿真算法的一致性/可扩展的部署共享虚拟环境，特别是在（计算上）异构用户; 2）触觉上令人信服的基于物理的被动分层模型简化框架，以减轻通信/计算负担，特别是当共享虚拟环境是大规模的时;通过提供系统的和理论的框架，本项目将显著地推进现有技术的发展，这在很大程度上是启发式的，ad-hoc的和定性的。 该项目还有望为一般触觉/遥操作机器人以及相邻的研究领域产生新的结果/观点/框架。 该项目奠定的理论基础将使许多强大的应用更接近现实（例如，虚拟协作手术培训，制造前产品评估，虚拟协作雕刻，触觉网络游戏等）。 也许更重要的是，这个项目可能会从根本上改变我们在网络空间中相互交流的方式。 该项目的教育/宣传活动将包括：开发新的实践和研究级机器人课程;学生咨询/指导，特别是针对少数民族学生; K-12触觉夏令营，特别是针对女生;在当地高中举办研讨会和公开演示;项目网站、国际合作和写书。

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.