Sending 'touch' over the internet could soon be as easy as sending a video with new haptic file format

The next evolution of the internet could involve digitally transmitting the sense of touch, which may transform remote surgery and usher in a whole new era of online gaming.

Researchers have developed a "Haptic Codecs for the Tactile Internet" (HCTI) standard that allows haptic information to be sent both ways across a network via data packets that are neither excessive in size nor require large amounts of bandwidth. They outlined the details in a paper published June 14 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association.

Currently, transmitting tactile feedback over a remote connection — for instance, when operating a robot arm onsite — requires data packets to be sent both ways 4,000 times per second. While this allows for feedback to be realistic and ensures robust data transmission, it places very high demands on the network that tranSports the data packets, said lead author of the paper Eckehard SteiNBAch, professor of media Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), in a statement.

To overcome this, the HCTI standard uses compression and reduces this clock rate to 100 times per second, which Steinbach said is "close to the human perception threshold."

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The HCTI standard optimizes the control loop between the sender and receiver, alongside compressing information in a similar way as is used to send audio or image files across the internet — but in a two-way format.

"The new codec is something like JPEG or MPEG, only for haptics," said SteiNBAck, adding: "In the case of JPEG, MP3 and MPEG, many applications emerged after the standards were made public. I expect the same from our new haptic codecs."