Context Aware Networks for Sending Multiple Senses

CASMS is an EPSRC fund­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion between Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don and Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool to inves­ti­gate the require­ments of the next gen­er­a­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works sup­port­ing dis­trib­uted and col­lab­o­ra­tive vir­tu­al reality.

Challenges of Distributed VR

Inter­ac­tive envi­ron­ments work best when they pro­vide fast and accu­rate feed­back, allow­ing users to feel as if they are inter­act­ing like they would in the real world.

Dis­trib­ut­ing inter­ac­tive envi­ron­ments over large dis­tances is chal­leng­ing because the delays between com­put­ers under­mine the objec­tive of mak­ing the whole sys­tem as respon­sive as possible.

CASMS’ objec­tives include to bet­ter under­stand what indi­vid­u­als need to inter­act remote­ly, and how syn­chro­ni­sa­tion algo­rithms inter­act with the laten­cy and band­width of a net­work to enable, or frus­trate, this collaboration.

CASMS’ Con­sen­sus Based Net­work­ing uses dis­trib­uted data fusion to syn­chro­nise two or more copies of vir­tu­al worlds with peer-to-peer architectures.

Network and Testbed

The CASMS test­bed includes the pro­vi­sion of a high-speed fiber between UCL and UoL enabling L3 con­nec­tiv­i­ty with high through­put and deter­min­is­tic laten­cy unavail­able on the pub­lic internet.

The test­bed is intend­ed to be acces­si­ble to third-par­ty users, allow­ing them to exper­i­ment with their tech­nolo­gies and appli­ca­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with CASMS. Any­one who is inter­est­ed or would like to learn more is encour­aged to get in touch!

New Technologies

The next gen­er­a­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tive vir­tu­al worlds will be ever more immer­sive, not just through improved visu­al and audi­to­ry per­for­mance, but through enabling inter­ac­tion through all five senses.

The CASMS project will exper­i­ment with and inte­grate new tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing hap­tic and olfac­to­ry inter­faces. In this space CASMS will devel­op and improve hard­ware and algo­rithms for manip­u­lat­ing vir­tu­al worlds.

Hap­tics is an impor­tant modal­i­ty for vir­tu­al worlds. CASMS uses state-of-the-art Dex­mo gloves to cre­ate hap­tic worlds, and has devel­oped new con­trol algo­rithms for high fideli­ty gloves like the Dexmo.

Key is under­stand­ing how a col­lab­o­ra­tive sys­tem oper­ates as a whole, and where oppor­tu­ni­ties lie for improve­ments with future tech­nolo­gies such as 5G, being explored by part­ner projects from the same call.

Phys­i­cal­ly believ­able worlds need users to expe­ri­ence the same vir­tu­al space, but also time. The role of Edge Com­put­ing and options for Time Syn­chro­ni­sa­tion are active top­ics in CASMS, allow­ing net­works to be built of high and low pow­er devices.

Outcomes

CASMS aims to add to the body of knowl­edge around build­ing dis­trib­uted AR and VR. The top­ics addressed relate close­ly to video games, tele­con­fer­enc­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tive design, tele­op­er­a­tion and robotics.

Our applied research is dis­sem­i­nat­ed through con­fer­ences, papers, code and collaborations.

A pri­ma­ry objec­tive of CASMS is to define the require­ments for future net­works nec­es­sary to bring the state-of-the-art worlds in the lab to the future home, office and smartphone.