Peer-to-peer control architecture for multiuser haptic collaboration over undirected delayed packet-switching network

We propose a novel peer-to-peer distributed control architecture for shared haptic collaboration among remotely-located users over undirected packet-switching network (e.g. Internet) with inter-user communication delay. The proposed architecture is distributed, in that each user simulates and interacts with its own local copy of the shared virtual environment. Spring connection among the local copies and local damping are used, which, together, under a certain condition, achieve configuration synchronization among the local copies while enforcing discrete-time passivity of the total peer-to-peer architecture, thereby, rendering the architecture portable/scalable for any (passive) users/devices and ensuring its interaction stability be user/device-invariant. The issue of optimizing communication network is also addressed with some relevant experimental results.