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# Can You Touch the Internet? A Journey in Remote Touch With Edge Computing and Haptic Coding

What does it take to safely transmit physical touch across the internet? Discover how engineers use edge computing and haptic algorithms to conquer extreme latency and trick human perception.

- **Speakers:** [Andreas Noll](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@andreas-noll)
- **Event:** World Congress 2025
- **Published:** August 20, 2025
- **Duration:** 16:39
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1463-can-you-touch-the-internet-a-journey-in-remote-touch-with-edge-computing-and-haptic-coding

## Summary

Remote touch represents the frontier of digitizing the human sense of touch, aiming to replicate physical sensations across digital networks much like classical advancements did for audio and video. Haptic technology seeks to revolutionize fields ranging from robotic teleoperation and healthcare to e-commerce by capturing two distinct aspects of human interaction. The kinesthetic sense governs the perception of movement, forces, and object weight in physical space, while the tactile sense interprets surface textures, friction, and microscopic roughness patterns primarily through localized vibrations.

Transmitting complete physical experiences through the internet introduces extreme engineering constraints, requiring absolute system stability, uncompromised safety, and an incredibly low latency tolerance of roughly one millisecond. Because measuring continuous haptic inputs generates thousands of packets per second, systems leverage Weber's Law to compress data streams. By recognizing that human perception only registers relative changes in physical force rather than absolute constants, engineers implement deadband algorithms to avoid transmitting redundant force data, cutting network packet volume significantly. However, internet latency still poses physical risks; to counteract this, edge computing is strictly necessary to run local control loops, preventing dangerous force amplification and maintaining system stability at the local client.

Simulating the tactile sense demands streaming high-fidelity vibration data across multiple contact points, which rapidly consumes bandwidth. Modern haptic codecs solve this by applying perceptual threshold filtering—discarding signal frequencies that humans cannot physically feel. Furthermore, by utilizing hierarchical clustering algorithms to group spatially similar data across adjacent touchpoints, engineers can reduce transmission payloads by up to fifty times without degrading the user experience. As prototypes mature and bridge the gap toward seamless remote physical interactions, AI systems capable of haptic reasoning—effectively giving machines the capacity to feel, grab, and map the physical world—provoke profound questions about the next generation of human-computer interaction.

**Keywords:** remote touch, haptic technology, kinesthetic feedback, tactile sensation processing, low latency haptics, webers law applications, haptic data compression, edge computing control loops, robotic teleoperation, telepresence systems, haptic codec engineering, tactile vibration rendering, deadband network transmission, human-computer interaction, spatial signal clustering, perceptual threshold filtering

## Chapters

1. **Introduction to remote touch and haptics** (00:05) — How remote touch and haptics digitize the human sense of touch similarly to audio and video.
1. **Potential applications for remote touch computing** (02:19) — How haptic technology will impact fields spanning robotics, healthcare, remote work, and shopping.
1. **Understanding the discrete human senses of touch** (03:58) — The distinction between kinesthetic forces and macroscopic and microscopic tactile sensations for interpreting physical interactions.
1. **Digitalizing kinesthetic and tactile haptic sensations** (06:28) — An exploration of early haptic feedback devices, robotic arms, and wearable tactile emulators.
1. **Network requirements for transmitting haptic data** (08:49) — The strict latency, stability, and reliability constraints needed to transmit haptic data over the internet.
1. **Leveraging edge computing for kinesthetic stability** (10:18) — Using Weber's law to compress kinesthetic signals and deploying edge clusters to maintain local stability.
1. **Haptic coding and clustering of tactile signals** (12:28) — Developing custom codecs and hierarchical clustering algorithms to compress high-bandwidth tactile data without losing sensory fidelity.
1. **The future overlap of artificial intelligence and haptics** (14:48) — The technological and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence systems developing a physical sense of touch.

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