Study on a Ubiquitous Mixed Reality Technology for Integrating First Person Haptic Media and Wireless Network

我们研究了如何构建一个逼真的泛在混合现实(UMR)环境。研究的目的是开发一种新的技术框架，以有效地支持除传统图像和声音媒体之外的新模式，如触觉接口设备。设计和开发了基本技术和软件系统。本文的研究成果如下：1.设计并实现了高效共享触觉媒体的触觉渲染优化方法和高性能网络协议等基础技术。触觉优化方法允许即使是新手也可以直观地优化触觉设备，而不需要注意任何设备特定的特性。新开发的协议使用一种被称为航位推算的方法来保存高效和稳定的触觉通信。利用项目1中实现的技术，设计并开发了一些应用系统，包括支持协同3D操作的分布式虚拟环境和手写字符远程教学系统。我们进一步增强了项目2中描述的应用系统，使其可以在网络上使用。实验实验台是利用国际、国家和地区的千兆网络搭建的。然后，我们在日本和韩国的几个协作者的站点上部署了应用系统，并进行了实验，以验证所开发的方法和系统的有效性。我们特别分析了网络延迟、抖动和丢包对触觉通信的可用性和用户友好性的影响，以及我们开发的方法如何弥补这些降级。整个系统的概念、提出的方法、实验系统配置、实验结果和分析都发表在各种会议论文和期刊论文上。

We have studied on how to construct a realistic ubiquitous mixed reality (UMR) environment. The purpose of the research is to develop a new technological framework to effectively support new modalities such as haptic interface devices in addition to the traditional image and sound media. Basic technologies and software systems are designed and developed. This study has produced the following results :1. We devised and implemented some fundamental technologies such as a haptic rendering optimization method and a high performance network protocol for efficiently sharing haptic media. The haptic optimization method allows even novices to intuitively optimize haptic devices without paying attention to any device-specific characteristics. The newly developed protocol uses a method called dead reckoning to preserve efficient and stable haptic communications.2. We designed and developed some application systems by using the technologies implemented in item 1. The developed systems include a distributed virtual environment for supporting collaborative 3D operations and a remote instruction system for teaching handwritten characters.3. We further enhanced the application systems as described in item 2 to be usable on the network. The experimental test-bed was constructed by using some international, national and regional gigabit networks. Then, we deployed the application systems in several collaborators' sites in Japan and Korea and conducted experiments to verify the effectiveness of the developed methods and systems. We especially analyzed how network delays, jitters, and packet losses impact the usability and user-friendliness on haptic communications and how our developed methods compensate for the degradations. The whole system concepts, proposed methods, experimental system configurations, and experimental results and analyses are published in various conference papers and journal papers.