Haptic broadcasting system based on environmental impedance transmission

In recent years, haptic communication systems have been attracting attention as third media following visual and audio communication systems. However, the way of transmitting haptic information to many people has not been established yet. The purpose of this research is to develop the basic system which broadcasts the haptic information. This papar proposes a haptic broadcasting system composed of a master-slave system and the other actuators which are used for multiple operators called ‘audience’ to feel environmental impedance. The master-slave system implements a bilateral control based on acceleration control. In the slave side, the environmental impedance is estimated in real time by using the recursive least-squares algorithm with a forgetting factor. The estimated environmental impdance is transmitted over the network to the other actuators which are manipulated by audience in the remote place. Each audience is able to feel the remote environment through each actuator. The validity of the proposed system described in this paper is confirmed by some experimental results.