Geographical study of the Tactile Internet: promising directions
V.I. BLANUTSA
V.B. Sochava Institute of Geography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia
Keywords: human geography, tactile communication, circular delay, domain placement, regional information flow, territorial adaptation
Abstract
According to forecasts, the deployment of the Tactile Internet based on the sixth-generation telecommunication network will begin in the next decade. To achieve this, it is necessary to ensure ultrareliable and minimal-latency transmission of not only traditional data (text, audio, video), but also tactile sensations (touch, pressure, vibration, roughness, etc.). For this purpose, an architecture consisting of three domains has already been developed, and devices for reading tactile sensations, converting them into digital recording and remote playback are being improved. However, there is not a single work in the world science on the possible socio-geographical consequences of the tactile communication deployment. This study defines the contours of future directions of the geographical study of the Tactile Internet based on a comparison of the methodological capabilities of human geography with the specifics of tactile data transmission over a telecommunication network. Using the author’s semantic search algorithm, which is an iterative machine learning system, the necessary publications have been selected in domestic and international bibliographic databases. Their analysis made it possible to identify the key parameters of the Tactile Internet and assess the level of geographical knowledge of the problem under consideration. It has been established that the lack of geographical research on tactile communication can be compensated to some extent by the human-geographical study of the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and 5G/6G wireless communications. Five promising scientific directions have been identified, which are conventionally called remotely delayed, spatial domain, regional streaming, boundary computing and territorial adaptive. The stages of development for each direction are highlighted and priority research questions are formulated. Possible fields of application of the results of the geographical study of the Tactile Internet are given.
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