01

Astonishing speed as fast as the response time of human tactile sense

‘Tactile’ means “connected with the sense of touch” according to the dictionary. Then, why the telecommunication society is so enthusiastic about the tactile internet? The tactile internet is the next evolution that will add a new dimension to human-to-machine interaction by enabling tactile interactions and at the same time revolutionise the interaction of machines. All human senses can interact with machines and their environments. In order for network to match human interaction with their environment and machine-to-machine interactions, they must meet the speed of our natural reaction times.
To feel each other physically over the internet, we need to exchange the information related to the senses accordingly. Among the five human senses, visual sensation is well known for its greediness for the bandwidth. On the other hand, tactile sensation is notorious for its pickiness on the punctuality. Among the five human senses, the response time of sight is 1/100th of a second, whereas the sense of touching requires extremely short response time, less than a 1/1000th of a second, or 1 milli-second. The late delivery of the tactile information will ruin the sense of being in touch.

02

What is the enabling technology for tactile internet?

The internet is a packet based network. In other words, the internet breaks down every information into small chunk of bits, or packet. We may imagine the packet as a car. When the packet meets a crossroad, the car is waiting in the line. We call this line queue. In current internet, all the packets looks the same and the one comes earlier goes out earlier. With this behavior and ever increasing traffic, the road is always crowded and it is difficult to convey tactile information. To enable tactile internet, widening the roads and improvement on the packet behavior is required.
To realize the tactile internet, ultra-low latency optical access technology is necessary. Fortunately, this technology was successfully developed in November by a team of ETRI researchers. ETRI announced one of its research team solved this problem in the optical access technology region. Firstly, they increased the speed of packet exchange to 25Gb/s from current 2.5Gb/s. This is the speed at which a 3 GB movie can be downloaded in one second. Secondly, they adopted marking the packets according to its urgency and allowed the users to send the urgent packets ahead of other packets. By this technologies, they showed the emergency data can be transferred in 0.001 seconds, the speed at our tactile sense responds. The researchers named the technology "TIC-TOC.”
The researchers believe that the TIC-TOC technology will further promote immersive entertainment such as high-definition single-person media broadcasting, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). In addition, it will also be possible to deploy robots and precisely control and operate them in dangerous or disaster areas in replacement of humans.

03

Changes in Industrial Environment and Possibilities by Tactile Internet

Of course realistic emotional exchange over the internet is a big thing. However, tactile internet is not only for that. In the forthcoming age of 4th industrial revolution, we will see robots, cars and all other machines connected to the internet all around us. Tactile internet will enable humans and machines to interact with each other far from their presence.
One of the example is telepresence. Let’s assume a patient is on the operation table possibly in a hospital where operating surgeon is not present. The operating surgeon is doing her job in the remote base hospital with VR headset connected to the operating robot in front of the patient. She feels her surgical knife touching her patient’s skin and organs. She feels she is just in front of her operation table thanks to the tactile internet. This kind of operation is often called telesurgery, or remote surgery. Education will also benefit from this technology. Students may see and touch exotic animals, enzymes, even molecules and perform the experiments impossible in the real environment. Online-shopping will be another beneficiaries. The customers may feel the touch of the goods just like they were in the offline market. When you buy a jacket online, you may feel the touch of the fabric over the internet.
Another example is the use of environment information. Let’s imagine a crowded working place full of robots and humans rushing from place to place. To prevent the robots from collision with human, robots and some other objects, the central computer need to gather the collision alarms, process them and send the information to the robots. This process over the internet should be carried out as fast as possible. Self-driving cars will become safer with this technology. Unlike current autonomous driving cars which relies heavily on its own algorithm and sensors, future cars will get information from the road. There’s an object on the road, there’s a human just around the corner, the traffic sign will change, etc. This environmental information will make the cars’ decision more accurate.
Combinations of above scenarios are possible. There are numerous and will be endless list of examples. Every aspect of our life will be influenced by transforming the current internet to the tactile internet. If you recollect the impact of the current internet to our everyday life, you may imagine the deep impact this new dimension of information exchange will bring. In the era of the Tactile Internet, our society will enjoy IoT services, with maximized safety, welfare, and efficiency. Expectations continues to grow for the Tactile Internet, which will bring new possibilities to our lives.