In the era of Industry 4 and Digital Twin – DT- (integrating Audio-Video, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Haptics - from the Greek word Haptikos meaning "able to touch") and the Tactile Internet (TI), it becomes obvious that telecom stakeholders need different networks requirements to provision high quality services with respect to the new standards. In reality, this era is proposed as TI, and it will achieve a true paradigm shift from content delivery to skill-set delivery network types, thanks to recent technical breakthroughs. It will build a new internet structure with improved capabilities; but it will be difficult to meet the technical needs of the TI with current fourth generation (4G) mobile communication systems. As a result, 5G mobile communication systems will be used at the wireless edge and as a key enabler for TI due to its automated core network functionalities. Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, most daily activities such as employment, research, and education are now conducted online rather than in person. As a result, internet traffic has risen dramatically. Nowadays, Tactile Internet is in its infancy deployment phase worldwide. For this reason, and because of the growing need of its applications, the feasibility of these applications on the existing and deployed networks infrastructures, especially in the growing countries, is thought to be very hard, even quasi-impossible. Since 5G is not reaching yet its convergence stage (i.e. it is not deployed everywhere) and there is a huge stress on mobile communications given that the world is still facing the COVID-19 Pandemic, and since all the activities are taking place online, we propose design and implement a QoS framework to facilitate the feasibility and the applicability of the TI systems, where no 5G infrastructure is deployed. This framework will predict the most suitable network type to be deployed for certain given TI applications with certain given KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Also, this framework is scalable, in such it gives an idea of even the future Next Generation Mobile Networks types (NGMN, if necessary). “To deal” with TI applications, means “to deal” with Haptics added to Audio and Video streams. Therefore, performance evaluation for haptic networks is required. And since there are different types of haptic networks, so interoperability is needed. Consequently, a standardization form is necessary for that purpose, to annotate and describe the haptic network. The first idea that flashes in mind, is the use of Ontologies. In these latters, we can add intelligent rules to infer additional data and predict resource requirements in order to achieve better performance. Many works in the research rely on Artificial Intelligence approaches to tackle the above-mentioned standardization, but very few depend on ontologies, and without futuristic outcomes, especially for the optimization problem. We mean by optimization, the optimal types, methods and rules that are able to accommodate the applicability of the TI systems (here come the applications KPIs) in an acceptable environment or infrastructure (here come the networking KPIs), and even-more, to infer the most optimal network type. To help manufacturing companies take full advantage of the TI, we propose to develop new methods and tools (ontologies) to intelligently handle the TI, DT (Digital Twin) and IoT (Internet of Things) sensor data and process data at the edge of the network and deliver faster insights. The outcomes of these ontologies, have been validated through two conducted case studies, where we simulated, in the first, TI traffic over Wi-Fi, WiMAX and UMTS (3G) infrastructures; While in the second we used 4G (LTE-A), along with SDN (Software Defined Networking) integrated to MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) as networking backbone. The results, in terms of QoS KPIs performance evaluation, present high relevance to our proposed Ontology outcomes.

The idiom by Thomas Fuller fantasizes the fact that seeing is believing, but the feeling is the truth. This ideology has fired the vision and innovation of the Mulsemedia, multiple-sensorial media, and Internet of Skills (IoS) which enable the exchange of control, skills, and expertise anytime/everywhere across the Internet. With the emergence of the new generation of mobile network (5G), Tactile Internet, as well as the deployment of Industry 4.0 and Health 4.0, multimedia systems are moving towards immersed haptic enabled human-machine interaction systems such as the Digital Twin (DT). Specifically, Industry 4.0 will be using DT and robots on a large scale. This will increase human-machine and interaction to a great extent. There will be multimodal communications used to interact with digital twins and robots, specially haptics. Hence, tactile internet will replace the conventional internet today. In fact, a DT system can also be extended in Health 4.0 domain to act as a COVID-19 early warning system. Tracking a person’s temperature and other symptom data in real-time can signal if as well as when it’s time to see a doctor or take a COVID test. Link to a COVID tracing app, the digital twin might help get more information about the virus relative to the person itself. Since there are currently no well-recognized models to evaluate the performance of these systems, to address this research lacuna, we proposed a Quality-of-Experience (QoE) model for DT systems containing multi-levels of subjective, objective, and physiopsychological influencing factors. The model is itemized through a fully detailed taxonomy that deduces the perceived user’s emotional and physical states during and after consuming spatial, temporal, proximal, and abstracted multi-modality media between humans and machines. Further, the taxonomy was modelled using the best practice of machine learning methods to show how QoE for digital twin applications can be inferred and predicted from interactions and biosignals in this class of applications. Furthermore, the taxonomy was applied to two use cases. The first one addresses the objective quality optimization for transmission in a large scale immersed haptic virtual reality over the Internet while the second one aims to objectively infer an important DT QoE physiological aspect i.e, fatigue.

In this article, we will reflect on the methodologies of ethical technology assessment (TA cf. Grunwald 2010), accompanying research projects focusing on tactile internet solutions with humans in the loop (TaHIL). We outline how TA might be oriented towards a set of prima facie values (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013) that address possible implications and consequences of technology use. This framework shall be applied to the development of tactile Internet technology treating such technology as a special kind of cyber-physical system. Because the impact of technical developments and their unintended consequences cannot be anticipated from the outset, it is all the more important to address ethically relevant aspects right from the start in research projects that develop TaHIL-applications.:1. Aim of the basic research in Technology Assessment 2. TA as an integrative part of the iterative research approach 3. Responsible Research and Innovation: three dimensional Path Developments 4. Dilemmata in the democratization of skills 5. Work systems within the framework of TaHIL technologies 6. Implementation process 7. Conclusion