Section: 6.43.1 Description
Content: The tactile and multi-modal communication service can be applied in multiple fields, e.g. industry, robotics and telepresence, virtual reality, augmented reality, healthcare, road traffic, serious gaming, education, culture and smart grid [38]. These services support applications enabling input from more than one sources and/or output to more than one destinations to convey information more effectively. As figure 6.43.1-1 illustrates, the input and output can be different modalities including: Video/Audio media; Information received by sensors about the environment, e.g. brightness, temperature, humidity, etc.; Haptic data: can be feelings when touching a surface (e.g., pressure, texture, vibration, temperature), or kinaesthetic senses (e.g. gravity, pull forces, sense of position awareness). Figure 6.43.1-1. Multi-modal interactive system For immersive multi-modal VR applications, synchronization between different media components is critical in order to avoid having a negative impact on the user experience (i.e. viewers detecting lack of synchronization), particularly when the synchronization threshold between two or more modalities is less than the latency KPI for the application. Example synchronization thresholds [41] [42] [43] [44] are summarised in table 6.43.1-1. Table 6.43.1-1: Typical synchronization thresholds for immersive multi-modality VR applications