Real-Virtual World Device Synchronization in a Cloud-Enabled Social Virtual Reality IoT Network

Virtual reality (VR) is currently being used in many different areas such as car prototyping, gaming, medical training, teaching, and so on. The Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as systems-on-a-chip (e.g. Raspberry Pi), smart appliances, and sensors support a wide range of services, including machine automation, and remote monitoring and control. This paper introduces a novel social VR-IoT environment, which allows users to share and control local or remote IoT devices in a virtual platform. Two approaches using the VR-IoT solution are presented: one local network-based and one cloud-based. The proposed VR-IoT environment contains VRITESS, the novel VR-IoT Environment Synchronization Scheme, which facilitates a consistent and integrated experience for users by enabling control of real IoT objects with VR headsets. The control of some IoT objects in extreme environments or devices which are complex to operate can be simplified in a virtual environment. The VRITESS synchronization scheme maintains the real objects updated following instructions given in the virtual world and vice-versa. Testing involved local network-based and cloud-based testbeds created with a VR headset and IoT devices with the Performance Engineering Laboratory, Dublin City University's, Ireland. Test results demonstrated that lower latency is experienced in the local-network testbed in comparison with the cloud testbed. Furthermore, tests regarding the communications protocols implemented in the cloud testbed indicated that MQTT generates less delay and data traffic than REST.