Feel virtual objects in Australia from Sweden: Network interface for haptic feedback devices (Thesis 2)

With a haptic feedback device, a user can not only interact with a 3D enviroment with 6 degrees of freedom (x,y,z,roll,pitch,yaw) but also feel resistance from virtual objects, friction, viscosity and other forces. The most common type of these devices connects through outdated firewire or paralell ports, and we have a few of those in our Haptics Lab. Your task would be to implement an application that communicates directly with the haptic device on a dedicated computer and the main computer over Ethernet, effectively making an Ethernet interface for the device. The main challenge is that stable haptic rendering requires delay times below 1 ms. We have a prototype application that almost but not fully meets that requirement, which motivates further investigation. Depending on background and interest of applicant there are mainly two different approaches to investigate:
Optimization of the network stack to reach below 1ms delay over local Ethernet
Implementing a so called energy bounding control algorithm that actually allows bigger delays while keeping the device stable. The latter also allows for long-distance haptic rendering/teleoperation whichwould be very exciting to get verified with our partner university in Melbourne, Australia.

The applicant should have computer science (D) or physics (F) background or equivalent competence and interest.