The IEEE ``Tactile Internet'' (TI) Standards working group (WG), designated the numbering IEEE 1918.1, undertakes pioneering work on the development of standards for the TI. This paper describes the WG, its intentions, and its developing baseline standard and the associated reasoning behind that and touches on a further standard already initiated under its scope: IEEE 1918.1.1 on ``Haptic Codecs for the TI.'' IEEE 1918.1 and its baseline standard aim to set the framework and act as the foundations for the TI, thereby also serving as a basis for further standards developed on TI within the WG. This paper discusses the aspects of the framework such as its created TI architecture, including the elements, functions, interfaces, and other considerations therein, as well as the novel aspects and differentiating factors compared with, e.g., 5G Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication, where it is noted that the TI will likely operate as an overlay on other networks or combinations of networks. Key foundations of the WG and its baseline standard are also highlighted, including the intended use cases and associated requirements that the standard must serve, and the TI's fundamental definition and assumptions as understood by the WG, among other aspects.

The Tactile Internet will enable users to physically explore remote environments and to make their skills available across distances. An important technological aspect in this context is the acquisition, compression, transmission, and display of haptic information. In this paper, we present the fundamentals and state of the art in haptic codec design for the Tactile Internet. The discussion covers both kinesthetic data reduction and tactile signal compression approaches. We put a special focus on how limitations of the human haptic perception system can be exploited for efficient perceptual coding of kinesthetic and tactile information. Further aspects addressed in this paper are the multiplexing of audio and video with haptic information and the quality evaluation of haptic communication solutions. Finally, we describe the current status of the ongoing IEEE standardization activity P1918.1.1 which has the ambition to standardize the first set of codecs for kinesthetic and tactile information exchange across communication networks.

Studies of the stimulating effect of ultrasound as a tactile display have recently become more intensive in the haptic domain. In this paper, we present the design, development, and evaluation of Haptogram; a system designed to provide point-cloud tactile display via acoustic radiation pressure. A tiled 2-D array of ultrasound transducers is used to produce a focal point that is animated to produce arbitrary 2-D and 3-D tactile shapes. The switching speed is very high, so that humans feel the distributed points simultaneously. The Haptogram system comprises a software component and a hardware component. The software component enables users to author and/or select a tactile object, create a point-cloud representation, and generate a sequence of focal points to drive the hardware. The hardware component comprises a tiled 2-D array of ultrasound transducers, each driven by an FPGA. A quantitative analysis is conducted to measure the Haptogram ability to display various tactile shapes, including a single point, 2-D shapes (a straight line and a circle) and a 3-D object (a hemisphere). Results show that all displayed tactile objects are perceivable by the human skin (an average of 2.65 kPa for 200 focal points). A usability study is also conducted to evaluate the ability of humans to recognize 2-D shapes. Results show that the recognition rate was well above the chance level (average of 59.44% and standard deviation of 12.75%) while the recognition time averaged 13.87 s (standard deviation of 3.92 s).

Neurohaptics is the field of study that strives to understand the complex neural representation provoked in response to tactile and/or kinesthetic stimuli. This field has garnered a noticeable attention over the past decade not only in neuro-scientific research but also in medical, marketing and engineering fields. In this paper, we review existing literature on Electroencephalography (EEG)-based neurohaptic studies charting out the main themes and significant findings. Furthermore, we provide a brief review of the EEG analytical methods commonly utilized in the neurohaptic domain. Also, we present a case study with the complete flow of conducting neurohaptic research studies. Lastly, we discuss limitations and provide directions for future neurohaptic research, such as: modeling quality of haptic experience, improving neurohaptic systems and neurohatpics in virtual reality.