LaRTI

Each Internet generation was believed to be the last, with designs pushed to near perfection. The first and original Internet, a virtually infinite network of computers, was a paradigm changer and went on to define the global economies of the late 20th century. However, after that Internet, came the Mobile Internet, connecting billions of smartphones, and yet again redefining entire segments of the economy. Today, we witness the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), soon to connect billions of objects and starting to impact economies. Tactile internet is an innovative technology that it will provide many new opportunities for emerging markets and services and revolutionize almost every segment of the society. The Tactile Internet will be able to deliver physical and tactile experiences remotely and thereby will produce a true paradigm shift from content-delivery to skill-set delivery networks [1,3,4]. A preliminary market analysis has revealed that the addressable market could reach up to US$20 trillion per annum worldwide – 20% of today’s worldwide GDP [2].

In the tactile internet scope, it’s necessary a bidirectional communication between the local haptic device (known as a master device) and the remote device (known as a slave device). The bidirectional communication tries to simulate the physical laws of action and reaction. It's important to emphasize that the Tactile Internet attempt to solve a complex problem, since the bidirectional communication requires a latency between 1ms and 10ms for most cases and 40ms for some cases [5, 6, 7].

On the other hand, new areas such as Reconfigurable Computing can improve the performance of terminal devices (master and slave). Reconfigurable computing enables the development of customizable hardware architectures for the algorithms, unlike the traditional model where there is general purpose hardware. With the development of customizable hardware (using Field-Programmable Gate Array - FPGA), algorithms can be parallelized and optimized to speed up the operations. Speed up to 1000x are presented in the literature [8 - 12]. Due to the increased use of FPGA reconfigurable computing in various applications such as consumer electronics, automotive and military electronics, etc., the FPGA market is expected to grow to $ 7.9 billion by 2020. The expansion of new applications and the hardware cost reduction are the main reasons for the growth of this market.

[1] M Dohler, G Fettweis, “The Tactile Internet – IoT, 5G and Cloud on Steroids,” Telefonica Guest Blog Post, 30 October 2014, >100k views; http://bit.ly/1BpOG3H.

[2] S Hicks, M Dohler, et al. “The Tactile Internet – Enabled by 5G,” UK BIS – Germany 5G Technology Collaboration, internal market briefing, September 2014; http://bit.ly/1MsadMW.

[3] Aijaz, M. Dohler, A. H. Aghvami, V. Friderikos, and M. Frodigh. Realizing the tactile internet: Haptic communications over next generation 5g cellular networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, PP(99):2–9, October 2016.

[4] M. Simsek, A. Aijaz, M. Dohler, J. Sachs, and G. Fettweis. The 5g-enabled tactile internet: Applications, requirements, and architecture. In 2016 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, pages 1–6, April 2016.

[5] Aristidou and J. Lasenby. Motion capture with constrained inverse kinematics for real-time hand tracking. In Communications, Control and Signal Processing (ISCCSP), 2010 4th International Symposium on, pages 1–5, March 2010.

[6] M. O. Culjat, J. Son, R. E. Fan, C. Wottawa, J. W. Bisley, W. S. Grundfest, and E. P. Dutson. Remote tactile sensing glove-based system. In 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, pages 1550–1554, Aug 2010.

[7] G. P. Fettweis. The tactile internet: Applications and challenges. IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, 9(1):64–70, March 2014.

[8] de Souza, A.C.D.; Fernandes, M.A.C. Parallel fixed point implementation of a radial basis function network in an FPGA. Sensors 2014, 14, 18223-18243.

[9] Lucileide da Silva, Matheus Torquato, and Marcelo A. C. Fernandes. Proposta de Arquitetura em Hardware para FPGA da técnica Q-Learning de aprendizagem por reforço. In ENIAC 2016, Recife, PE, Oct 2016.

[10] Sérgio S. Natan and Marcelo A. C. Fernandes. Real-time Simulator for dynamic systems using a FPGA platform. In CBA 2016, Vitoria, ES, Oct 2016.

[11] Daniel Noronha and Marcelo A. C. Fernandes. Implementação em FPGA de máquina de vetores de suporte (SVM) para classificação e regressão. In ENIAC 2016, Recife, PE, Oct 2016.

[12] Matheus Torquato and Marcelo A. C. Fernandes. Proposta de implementação paralela de algoritmo genético em FPGA. In CBA 2016, Vitoria, ES.