Congestion Control for Network-Aware Telehaptic Communication

Telehaptic applications involve delay-sensitive multimedia communication between remote locations with distinct Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for different media components. These QoS constraints pose a variety of challenges, especially when the communication occurs over a shared network, with unknown and time-varying cross-traffic. In this work, we propose a transport layer congestion control protocol for telehaptic applications operating over shared networks, termed as dynamic packetization module (DPM). DPM is a lossless, network-aware protocol which tunes the telehaptic packetization rate based on the level of congestion in the network. To monitor the network congestion, we devise a novel network feedback module, which communicates the end-to-end delays encountered by the telehaptic packets to the respective transmitters with negligible overhead. Via extensive simulations, we show that DPM meets the QoS requirements of telehaptic applications over a wide range of network cross-traffic conditions. We also report qualitative results of a real-time telepottery experiment with several human subjects, which reveal that DPM preserves the quality of telehaptic activity even under heavily congested network scenarios. Finally, we compare the performance of DPM with several previously proposed telehaptic communication protocols and demonstrate that DPM outperforms these protocols.Comment: 25 pages, 19 figure

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Haptic data reduction through dynamic perceptual analysis and event-based communication

This research presents an adjustable and flexible framework for haptic data compression and communication that can be used in a robotic teleoperation session. The framework contains a customized event-driven transmission control protocol, several dynamically adaptive perceptual and prediction methods for haptic sample reduction, and last but not the least, an architecture for the data flow

The Shape of Damping: Optimizing Damping Coefficients to Improve Transparency on Bilateral Telemanipulation

This thesis presents a novel optimization-based passivity control algorithm for hapticenabled bilateral teleoperation systems involving multiple degrees of freedom. In particular, in the context of energy-bounding control, the contribution focuses on the implementation of a passivity layer for an existing time-domain scheme, ensuring optimal transparency of the interaction along subsets of the environment space which are preponderant for the given task, while preserving the energy bounds required for passivity. The involved optimization problem is convex and amenable to real-time implementation. The effectiveness of the proposed design is validated via an experiment performed on a virtual teleoperated environment. The interplay between transparency and stability is a critical aspect in haptic-enabled bilateral teleoperation control. While it is important to present the user with the true impedance of the environment, destabilizing factors such as time delays, stiff environments, and a relaxed grasp on the master device may compromise the stability and safety of the system. Passivity has been exploited as one of the the main tools for providing sufficient conditions for stable teleoperation in several controller design approaches, such as the scattering algorithm, timedomain passivity control, energy bounding algorithm, and passive set position modulation. In this work it is presented an innovative energy-based approach, which builds upon existing time-domain passivity controllers, improving and extending their effectiveness and functionality. The set of damping coefficients are prioritized in each degree of freedom, the resulting transparency presents a realistic force feedback in comparison to the other directions. Thus, the prioritization takes effect using a quadratic programming algorithm to find the optimal values for the damping. Finally, the energy tanks approach on passivity control is a solution used to ensure stability in a system for robotics bilateral manipulation. The bilateral telemanipulation must maintain the principle of passivity in all moments to preserve the system\u2019s stability. This work presents a brief introduction to haptic devices as a master component on the telemanipulation chain; the end effector in the slave side is a representation of an interactive object within an environment having a force sensor as feedback signal. The whole interface is designed into a cross-platform framework named ROS, where the user interacts with the system. Experimental results are presented

Robotic surgery, human fallibility, and the politics of care

Robotic Surgery, Human Fallibility, and the Politics of Care leverages the methods and theoretical paradigms of performance, visual, and new media studies to explore the contradictions, aspirations, and failures of modern technologized medicine. In particular, I consider the use of robots in the operating rooms of a large research hospital. University Hospital illuminates a contemporary articulation of human bodies and robotic technology that focuses and amplifies existing and emergent tensions and contradictions in modern medicine's investment in providing both care and cure. Intuitive Surgical, Inc.'s da Vinci Surgical System provides a platform for this exploration, both as a concrete, material, and particular assemblage of hardware, software and human wetware, and as a technology that offers a specific and perhaps more productive vantage point--a modest step stool--for understanding the contemporary politics of surgical pedagogy and practice. I locate the dVSS in a broader context of ambivalence that surgeons experience with regard to the manual practices of their craft, an ambivalence amplified by the increasing sophistication and automation of surgical tools and the changing ontologies of surgical practice. The surgical interface of the dVSS prosthetically enhances--as well as displaces and replaces--embodied surgical skill. At a time when all facets of medical care grapple with the problem of medical error, I outline an emergent sensibility of machinic virtuosity, articulated to both human and robotic surgical practice alike, geared toward addressing and overcoming the perceived pitfalls of human fallibility. Rather than simply enacting a technological dehumanization of medicine, robotic surgery suggests a more complicated terrain where the nature of the human and the machine bleed into each other. What I term the becoming machine of the surgeon and the becoming surgeon of the medical device occurs on the cutting edge of the robot-surgeon interface. The implications of this emergent medical sensibility are far from clear or unilateral. In closing, I reflect on the uncertain impact of the ideal of machinic virtuosity on the politics of care. This reflection considers software and machine ethics alongside medicine's aspiration to manage contingency according to the procedurality of medical and surgical protocols

Designing and Delivering Interactive, Simulator-based Aviation Research Studies on the Web

Traditionally, interactive, simulator-based aviation research studies have been conducted in physical labs. However, the internet has allowed researchers to deliver experiments via web platforms, thus gaining the ability to reach out to larger populations, including subject-matter-experts. However, existing experiment delivery platforms are limited in delivering complex research studies. Such studies require multi-participant interaction, complex task environment, integration of standard experiment procedures with complex task environment, and a high degree of research controls over participant performance, selection, and data collection process. Such studies are often the ones that benefit the most from access to subject-matter-experts. There is a lack of a distributed, customizable, plug-and-play, online experiment platform capable of delivering the aforementioned types of studies. To address this gap, a novel prototype web platform, called the Integrated Modular Platform, was developed. The platform was designed to meet all the aforementioned requirements of a complex research study through integrating a website component with any PC-based simulator system to allow researchers to provide a real-time distributed simulation environment to multiple participants. A case study approach was used to provide initial validation of the developed platform and concept by using the Integrated Modular Platform to conduct a follow-up study on the effect of information asynchrony on pilot-controller communication. Information asynchrony describes the situation where the same piece of information is presented to two different parties at different times (Yuan & Histon, 2014). For the purpose of validating the platform, the platform was used to deliver a realistic ATC-flight simulator environment representative of the real world on the web, in combination with standard experiment procedures. As well, the Integrated Modular Platform was used to recruit subject-matter-expert participants to participate in the follow-up study, as part of demonstrating its ability to provide high research control. The result of the follow-up study showed that there were no generally observable effects on pilot-controller communication as information asynchrony increased. Factors that may have created this non-effect were identified and include challenges maintaining consistent operations with professional participants, and limitations in characterizing information asynchrony with time. The result of initial validation of the Integrated Modular Platform from the case study demonstrated the capability of an online simulation environment to represent real-world work practices. A majority of participants had positive experience with the case study overall. The recruitment of subject-matter-experts was also generally effective in terms of screening for qualified personnel, with improvements needed for online scheduling implementation. The result showed that the Integrated Modular Platform has the proven capability to successfully provide both realistic simulation environments on the web, in terms of ATC-flight operations, and high degree of research control with subject-matter-expert recruitment. Future work include further validating such capability for different simulation environments and recruitment needs. As well, there is still the need to validate platform’s ability to allow non-programming researchers to implement different types of complex research studies on the web, as this was not done in the case study