The effect of network delay on remote calligraphic teaching with haptic interfaces

ABSTRACT

For a design of distributed virtual environments (DVEs) system, it is important to clarify the relation between network-level quality of service (QoS) and user-level QoS. This paper examines network QoS problem on a remote calligraphic teaching system with haptics interfaces, where a pair of users (teacher and student) interact directly (not through any virtual objects), and the operation of haptic device of one user is immediately reflected to another user's reaction force. In this system, teacher navigates student to write down the same character on a virtual paper using a constraint force. The constraint force is used to hold the user's stylus of haptic device to follow the remote user's operation. We propose a new method to generate a constraint force, which enables to hold tightly the remote user's stylus with suppressing unexpected vibrations. This system also can show a visual guide, which stands the remote user's information (position of the cursor and writing pressure).

We carried out subjective evaluation on the system for assessing the effect of network delay between teacher and student's hosts. We also compared the effect of force feedback and visual guide in the system to evaluate the role of haptics.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.4 Software/Program Verification

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Performance

Keywords:
haptics, network QoS, remote teaching