Touch-enabled Tactile Internet Training Network and Open Source Testbed

The touch-enabled Tactile Internet (TI), also known as the Internet of Skills, is anticipated to bring an unprecedented economic and social impact to the digitized world. So far, it has attracted tremendous interest from industry, standardisation bodies and the research community, and is fully aligned with the goals of Horizon Europe. TOAST will train the next generation of early-stage researchers (ESRs) to tackle the critical challenges of TI through interdisciplinary research. Addressing these challenges requires the ESRs to gain a broad understanding of haptics, teleoperation, haptic communication, networking, edge computing, machine learning and human perception. By bringing together world-class researchers from academia and industry, TOAST will (a) contribute to structuring doctoral research training in EU and consolidating currently fragmented trainings into one DN on TI; (b) provide an innovative training program to the ESRs with a balance of fundamental research questions, pragmatic industrial research perspectives, interdisciplinary cooperation through the development of a joined testbed, which will not only benefit the ESRs by enabling remote training and experiments, demonstrations and public engagement, but also generate stronger synergies and extend TOAST’s impact beyond its conclusion; (c) develop E2E solutions for the TI by leveraging the complementary competences of the partners, which will be transferred into IPR, new products and services; and (d) contribute to the development of the ESRs’ skills and network, enhancing their career perspectives and employability. Importantly, the industrial partners will actively contribute to TOAST's training programme and bridge the gap between fundamental research and applied research to ensure effective exploitation of the research results. TOAST will empower the ESRs with unique competences, while paving the way for other researchers to work on TI, which will assure Europe’s leading position in TI worldwide.