Efficient Meshes from Point Clouds for Tactile Internet

Abstract

We can see and we can hear through the internet, but not yet touch. Tactile Internet (TI) is the paradigm that will enable the transmission of tactile feedback through the internet. TI requires Ultra Low Latency (ULL) networking to prevent desynchronization. Reaching the ULL requirements for medium to long distances is not possible without breaking the known physical limits of the speed of light. We propose instead to bypass these requirements by running a physical simulation of the controlled environment to perform predictions before the information can arrive. To this end, efficient low-polygon 3D meshes from the objects in the environment are required for physical simulation. The focus of this work is on reconstructing these meshes from point cloud scanners. Through a combination of Marching Cubes mesh reconstruction and Hoppe's Mesh Simplification, point clouds with up to 20 mm Gaussian noise can be accurately reconstructed into compact low polygon meshes.