Tangible video communication

Abstract

Video-conferencing and video calls are frequently used nowadays, but more immersive communications, where the participants can also feel each other, are still to be explored. Different from earlier attempts of connecting haptic devices only, the use of more types of devices, such as depth sensors, was explored in this project. The depth sensor tracks the motion of a hand of one user and send it to the other user in the form of coordinates. As the receiving device reads the data and reacts to the tracked motion, the hand becomes tangible to the other party. To host such connection over the Internet, cloud servers can be used to link the two users. In this project we study the mechanisms applied to obtain smooth and consistent motion transferred for haptic communications, as well as conduct testing to evaluate the reliability and smoothness of the haptic connection across the Internet. The results from the testing showed that haptic communication over the Internet is possible at locations in Singapore where there are stable Wi-Fi connections.