Tactile Internet (TI), with the capability of providing multisensory haptic human-machine interactions, is envisioned as a key enabling technology for an emerging application, called human digital twin (HDT). HDT is expected to revolutionize the human lifestyle and prompts the development of Metaverse. However, the realization of HDT poses stringent demands on pervasive connectivity, real-time feedback, high-fidelity modeling and ultra-high reliability (between physical and virtual spaces), which can hardly be met by TI only. In this article, we thus shed light on the design of edge computing empowered TI (ECoTI) for HDT. Aiming at offering strong interactions and extremely immersive quality of experience, we introduce the system architecture of ECoTI for HDT, and analyze its major design requirements and challenges. Moreover, we present core guidelines and detailed steps for system implementations. In addition, we conduct an experimental study based on our recently built testbed, which shows a particular use case of ECoTI for HDT in physical therapy, and the results indicate that the proposed framework, i.e., ECoTI, can significantly improve the effectiveness of the system. Finally, we conclude this article with a brief discussion of open issues and future directions.

翻译：触觉互联网（TI）具备提供多感官触觉人机交互的能力，被视为新兴应用——人类数字孪生（HDT）的关键使能技术。HDT有望彻底改变人类生活方式，并推动元宇宙的发展。然而，HDT的实现对普适连接、实时反馈、高保真建模及（物理与虚拟空间之间的）超高可靠性提出了严苛要求，这难以仅通过TI来满足。为此，本文聚焦于面向HDT的边缘计算赋能TI（ECoTI）的设计。为提供强交互性与极致沉浸式体验质量，我们介绍了面向HDT的ECoTI系统架构，并分析了其主要设计需求与挑战。此外，我们提出了系统实现的核心指导原则与详细步骤。基于近期搭建的测试平台，我们开展了一项实验研究，展示了ECoTI在物理治疗中面向HDT的具体用例，结果表明所提出的ECoTI框架能显著提升系统效能。最后，本文简要讨论了开放性问题与未来方向作为总结。