IoTactileSim: A Virtual Testbed for Tactile Industrial Internet of Things Services

Abstract

With the inclusion of tactile Internet (TI) in the industrial sector, we are at the doorstep of the tactile Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This provides the ability for the human operator to control and manipulate remote industrial environments in real-time. The TI use cases in IIoT demand a communication network, including ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, availability, and security. Additionally, the lack of the tactile IIoT testbed has made it more severe to investigate and improve the quality of services (QoS) for tactile IIoT applications. In this work, we propose a virtual testbed called IoTactileSim, that offers implementation, investigation, and management for QoS provisioning in tactile IIoT services. IoTactileSim utilizes a network emulator Mininet and robotic simulator CoppeliaSim to perform real-time haptic teleoperations in virtual and physical environments. It provides the real-time monitoring of the implemented technology parametric values, network impairments (delay, packet loss), and data flow between operator (master domain) and teleoperator (slave domain). Finally, we investigate the results of two tactile IIoT environments to prove the potential of the proposed IoTactileSim testbed.

Emulation Framework for Haptic Data Transmission Using Real-Time Transport Protocol

“…Along similar lines, authors in [23] presented IoTactileSim as a virtual testbed that utilizes Mininet network emulator to create the network topology between the master and slave domains, as well as the tactile support engine. In addition, the CoppeliaSim robotic simulator was utilized to create a virtual teleoperator.…”

Evolution of smart grids towards the Internet of energy: Concept and essential components for deep decarbonisation

“…In the tactile Internet, human beings will interact with machines in a physical and virtual space, whilst experiencing sensory emotions, forces and touch besides conventional video and audio data. Such advances in Internet technology, along with the fast evolution of communication techniques from the 1G to 6G, make possible emerging services such as machine‐to‐machine communication, H2MC, augmented and virtual reality in real time [59, 60].…”

Wireless Sensing and Networking for the Internet of Things

“…The authors of [ 6 ] stressed the exigency of using a virtual testbed dubbed IoTactileSim to implement, investigate, and manage QoS provisioning in tactile industrial IoT (IIoT) services. The study demonstrated that tactile IIoT enables the real-time control and manipulation of remote industrial environments via a human operator.…”