Haptic communication using multiple-routes in data transmission

Recently, the study of real-world haptics is taken place actively. In order to transmit tactile sensation to a remote place, it is necessary to utilize a network. However, there are many problems in network, for example, communication delay, packet loss and packet number change. Generally, time delay affects real-time property of communication, and on the other hand, packet loss and packet number change degrade the reliability of data transfer. Because the real-time property is important factor in real-world haptics, conventional studies mainly focused on the time delay. However, successive packet loss also causes performance deterioration of the haptic communication. In order to address the problem, this paper uses multiple-routes for data transfer. By using the method, the effect of continuous packet loss is decreased. The viability of the proposed method is shown by some experimental results.