Realizing Immersive Communications in Human Digital Twin by Edge Computing Empowered Tactile Internet: Visions and Case Study

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new immersive communication framework for Human Digital Twins using edge computing and tactile Internet, aiming to enable real-time, multi-modal, and highly reliable interactions for applications like Metaverse and physical therapy.

Contribution

It introduces the IC-HDT-ECoTI framework, detailing its architecture, design requirements, implementation steps, and demonstrates its effectiveness through experimental case studies.

Findings

Significant improvement in system effectiveness for physical therapy use case.

Framework supports ultra-high reliability and real-time multi-modal data transmission.

Experimental results validate the proposed framework's potential in immersive HDT applications.

Abstract

Human digital twin (HDT) is expected to revolutionize the future human lifestyle and prompts the development of advanced human-centric applications (e.g., Metaverse) by bridging physical and virtual spaces. However, the fulfillment of HDT poses stringent demands on the pervasive connectivity, real-time feedback, multi-modal data transmission and ultra-high reliability, which urge the need of enabling immersive communications. In this article, we shed light on the design of an immersive communication framework for HDT by edge computing empowered tactile Internet (namely IC-HDT-ECoTI). Aiming at offering strong interactions and extremely immersive quality of experience, we introduce the system architecture of IC-HDT-ECoTI, and analyze its major design requirements and challenges. Moreover, we present core guidelines and detailed steps for system implementations. In addition, we conduct an experimental study based on our recently built testbed, which shows a particular use case of IC-HDT-ECoTI in physical therapy, and the obtained results indicate that the proposed framework can significantly improve the effectiveness of the system. Finally, we conclude this article with a brief discussion of open issues and future directions.