Teleoperation over 5G Networks: Enabling Haptic Interaction in Mobile Audio-Visual Communications

视听通信是允许用户远距离互动的多媒体系统的核心。虽然视听信息为用户提供了出现在远程环境中的令人满意的印象，但不支持物理交互和操纵。真正沉浸在遥远的环境中，需要能够与远程对象进行物理交互，并真正与其他人接触。如果我们通过触觉方式加强传统的视听交流，那么远程触摸和操纵物体就成为可能。触觉通信是一个相对年轻的研究领域，有可能给人与人和人与机器的交互带来革命性的变化。最近，5G移动网络获得了相当大的研究关注，其中包括面向控制的通信解决方案(也称为触觉互联网)的想法。有针对性的低延迟通信、高水平的覆盖和可靠性以及提高的吞吐量使5G网络非常适合具有触觉反馈的远程操作应用。在本项目中，我们对5G网络上的触觉反馈遥操作进行了两个方向的研究(1)自上而下：关注应用(APP)层的机制，同时考虑网络特性；(2)自下而上：关注媒体接入(MAC)层的资源分配，同时考虑应用特性。本项目的主要目标是开发合适的触觉通信和资源分配/移动解决方案，并对触觉通信和5G无线电资源分配进行联合优化，以最大化5G网络上的遥操作性能。自2016年1月以来，两家私人投资机构就这一研究主题进行了合作。

Audiovisual communications is at the core of multimedia systems that allow users to interact across distances. While audiovisual information provides a user with a satisfactory impression of being present in a remote environment, physical interaction and manipulation are not supported. True immersion into a distant environment requires the ability to physically interact with remote objects and to literally get in touch with other people. Touching and manipulating objects remotely becomes possible if we augment traditional audiovisual communications by the haptic modality. Haptic communications is a relatively young field of research that has the potential to revolutionize human-human and human-machine interaction.Recently, 5G mobile networks have gained considerable research attention, including the idea of a control-oriented communication solution (also called the Tactile Internet). The targeted low latency communication, the high level of coverage and reliability and the improved throughput make 5G networks very suitable for teleoperation applications with haptic feedback. In this project, we investigate teleoperation with haptic feedback over 5G networks in two directions (1) Top-down: focusing on application (APP) layer mechanisms while considering network characteristics; (2) Bottom-up: focusing on medium access (MAC) layer resource allocation while considering the application characteristics. The main objective of this project is to develop suitable haptic communication and resource allocation/mobility solutions and to perform joint optimization of haptic communication and 5G radio resource allocation with the goal of maximizing the teleoperation performance over 5G networks. The two PIs collaborate on this research topic since January 2016.