Perception-Based Data Reduction and Transmission of Haptic Data in Telepresence and Teleaction Systems

TLDR

The study aims to reduce the packet rate between operator and teleoperator while preserving system immersiveness. The method leverages just‑noticeable‑difference thresholds to transmit haptic updates only when changes exceed human perceptual limits, evaluated on 1‑ and 3‑DoF teleaction setups. Experiments demonstrate a packet‑rate reduction of up to 90% with no loss in system performance.

Abstract

We present a novel approach for the transmission of haptic data in telepresence and teleaction systems. The goal of this work is to reduce the packet rate between an operator and a teleoperator without impairing the immersiveness of the system. Our approach exploits the properties of human haptic perception and is, more specifically, based on the concept of just noticeable differences. In our scheme, updates of the haptic amplitude values are signaled across the network only if the change of a haptic stimulus is detectable by the human operator. We investigate haptic data communication for a 1 degree-of-freedom (DoF) and a 3 DoF teleaction system. Our experimental results show that the presented approach is able to reduce the packet rate between the operator and teleoperator by up to 90% of the original rate without affecting the performance of the system.