A Remote Surgery Use Case for the IEEE P1918.1 Tactile Internet Standard
Georgia E. Kolovou, Sharief Oteafy, Periklis Chatzimisios · 2021
Remote interaction and manipulation of physical objects is one of the promising directions in networked services across the connected world. In formalizing an enabling architecture, the IEEE P1918.1 Standard for the Tactile Internet (TI) is being developed to outline tactile interactions and democratizing skills. For the Tactile Internet to become a reality, advancements in network technologies, orchestrated with haptic-technologies and artificial intelligence, are necessary. The standardization of 5G, rolling out as the next generation of mobile communications, is paving the way for supporting the Tactile Internet vision. The IEEE P1918.1 Working Group (WG) has been developing the architecture, objectives, reasoning and future use cases of the Tactile Internet. This paper focuses on the potential for enabling TI-based remote surgery, and introduces a specific use case (cholecystectomy) that is mapped to the IEEE P1918.1 standard reference architecture. Challenging issues such as network design, Quality of Service (QoS), and multiplexing are taken into account and discussed. This work also emphasizes the role of deterministic message exchanges that would support Tactile Internet in carrying out a remote operation.