Experimental comparison of internet haptic collaboration with time-delay compensation techniques

In this paper we analyzed the performance of a peer-to-peer haptic collaboration system with two users jointly manipulating an object with mass and damping properties. We used objective measures to compare tuned PD, wave variables and time domain passivity controllers subject to real time delays from the Internet through similar experimental parameters. We set up a packet reflector network at our collaborators' servers in order to able to perform the experiment with subjects located in the same laboratory. Subjects were blinded to which controller was used and received them in a randomized sequence. UDP data packets were used for haptic data communication and the packet transmission rate was maintained at 1000 Hz. Our experimental results show that the tuned PD controller gave the best performance in terms of position error and wave variables in terms of force.