An iterative approach to optimizing multi-user networked haptic simulations

Network-based collaborative virtual environments have attracted a great deal of interest in recent years. Stability and performance of such systems can significantly degrade due to the network delay, delay jitter and limited packet transmission rate. Building on our recent work in this area, we propose a systematic approach for designing distributed multi-user haptic simulation control systems to improve their stability and transparency. Three distributed two-user control schemes are presented and optimized for a given communication delay. In addition, an iterative procedure is developed for extending these methods to simulation environments involving more than two users by solving an optimization problem in each step. The effectiveness of the proposed methods are examined in two and three-user haptic simulations.