Software Networks, 2nd Edition

14Tactile Internet

Tactile internet can be defined as a network environment allowing remote access to handle, execute and control real objects or virtual objects in real-time by men or machines. An IEEE working group was defined to determine and standardize this new environment: IEEE P1918.1. One of the major solutions for the introduction of tactile internet is 5G thanks to its very short latency time of 1 ms and to a great communication reliability. Essential functions like security, trust and identification must also be added to achieve tactile internet applications.

14.1. Tactile internet applications

Tactile internet must remotely provide not only content, but also skills. For this, tactile internet requires a very reliable and very reactive connectivity, capable of providing reliability and latency values usually required for physical, real-time interactions. Technically, tactile internet requires setting up a communication infrastructure which combines low latency, determinism, high availability, resilience and reliability, plus a high level of security. These requirements will necessarily be satisfied simultaneously by all applications, but they will have to be meant for the said “critical” applications, and partially performed for many non-critical applications. In order to meet these strict requirements, tactile internet will have to be linked to a computing Cloud. Yet, since the interaction time must be very small, it implies the presence of control and processing ...