Implications of Lifespan Differences in Multisensory Perception on Technologies for Tactile Internet

The research at the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI) aims to develop technologies for next generation digitally transmitted human-to-machine or humanto-human communication and interaction. Such interactions in virtual, augmented, or remote environments –to be supported by the Tactile Internet (TI)– will involve closed-loop multisensory information exchanges between the interaction partners. For the new digital communication infrastructure to serve a broad population of users and use cases, age- and learning-dependent factors affecting multisensory perception need to be considered en route to new technological developments. Psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists in CeTI are currently conducting research at the interface between human factors and the development of tactile codecs, haptic augmentations in VR/AR-assisted technologies, as well as machine learning algorithms. In this talk, we will first give an overview of development and agingrelated changes in mechanisms of neuronal gain control, which, in turn, affect the reliability and capacity of human perception and action. Furthermore, we will highlight a selection of ongoing research in CeTI that focus on using (i) human perceptual comparison data to evaluate tactile codecs developed for compressing vibrotactile signals, (ii) neurocognitive mechanisms to inform the development of plausible vibrotactile augmentation and (iii) human-behavior to inform machine-learning.