Telepresence

Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location.

Telepresence requires that the senses of the user, or users, are provided with such stimuli as to give the feeling of being in that other location. Additionally, the user(s) may be given the ability to affect the remote location. In this case, the user's position, movements, actions, voice, etc. may be sensed, transmitted and duplicated in the remote location to bring about this effect. Therefore information may be travelling in both directions between the user and the remote location.

Telepresence: a matter of degree

Telepresence is a matter of degree. Rarely will a telepresence system provide such comprehensive and convincing stimuli that the user perceives no differences from actual presence. But the user may set aside such differences, depending on the application. Watching television, for example, although it stimulates our primary senses of vision and hearing, rarely gives the impression that the watcher is no longer at home. However, television sometimes engages the senses sufficiently to trigger emotional responses from viewers somewhat like those experienced by people who directly witness or experience events. Televised depictions of sports events, or disasters such as the September 11 terrorist attacks can elicit strong emotions from viewers.

As the screen size increases, so does the sense of immersion, as well as the range of subjective mental experiences available to viewers. Some viewers have reported a sensation of genuine vertigo or motion sickness while watching IMAX movies of flying or outdoor sequences.

Even the fairly simple telephone achieves a limited form of telepresence, in that users consider themselves to be talking to each other on the telephone rather than talking to the telephone itself. To an observer with no knowledge of telephones, watching a person chatting to an inanimate object might seem curious, but the telephone is readily usable by almost everyone who can speak and listen.

Telepresence technology aims to greatly expand on the sensory immersion available from older technologies such as telephones, televisions, and motion pictures.

Most often, currently feasible telepresence gear leaves something to be desired; the user must suspend disbelief to some degree, and choose to act in a natural way, appropriate to the remote location, perhaps using some skill to operate the equipment. In contrast, a telephone user does not see herself as "operating" the telephone, but merely talking to another person with it. A goal of telepresence developers might be to similarly have their users lose direct awareness of the equipment they are using.

Comparison with virtual reality

Telepresence refers to a user interacting with another live, real place, and is distinct from virtual presence, where the user is given the impression of being in a simulated environment. Telepresence and virtual presence rely on similar user-interface equipment, and they share the common feature that the relevant portions of the user's experience at some point in the process will be transmitted in an abstract (usually digital) representation. The main functional difference is the entity on the other end: a real environment in the case of telepresence, vs. a computer in the case of virtual reality.

Implementation

For a user to be given a convincing telepresence experience, sophisticated technologies are required.

Vision

A minimum system usually includes visual feedback. Ideally, the entire field of view of the user is filled with a view of the remote location, and the viewpoint corresponds to the movement and orientation of the user's head. In this way, it differs from television or cinema, where the viewpoint is out of the control of the viewer.

In order to achieve this, the user may be provided with either a very large (or wraparound) screen, or small displays mounted directly in front of the eyes. The latter provides a particularly convincing 3D sensation. The movements of the user's head must be sensed, and the camera must mimic those movements accurately and in real time. This is important to prevent unintended motion sickness.

Sound

Sound is generally the easiest sensation to implement with high fidelity, with the telephone dating back more than 100 years, and very high-fidelity sound equipment readily available as consumer gear. Stereophonic sound is more convincing than monoaural sound, and surround sound is better still.

Manipulation

The ability to manipulate a remote object or environment is an important aspect of real telepresence systems, and can be implemented in large number of ways depending on the needs of the user. Typically, the movements of the user's hands (position in space, and posture of the fingers) are sensed by data gloves, inertial sensors, or absolute spacial position sensors. The robot then copies those movements as closely as possible.

The more closely the robot re-creates the form factor of the human hand, the greater the sense of telepresence. Complexity of robotic effectors varies greatly, from simple one axis grippers, to fully anthropomorphic robot hands.

This ability is also known as Teleoperation, and is usually implemented robotically, with the actions of a robot standing in for those of the user.

Haptic teleoperation refers to a system that provides some sort of tactile force feedback to the user, so the user feels some approximation of the weight, firmness, size, and/or texture of the remote objects manipulated by the robot.

Applications

Teleconferencing

Rather than travelling great distances, in order to have a face-face meeting, it is now possible to teleconference instead, using a multiway video phone. Each member of the meeting, or each party, can see every other member on a screen or screens, and can talk to them as if they were in the same room. This brings enormous time and cost benefits, as well as a reduced impact on the environment from air travel. This is already a well-established technology, used by many businesses today. The chief executive officer of Cisco Systems, John Chambers in June 2006 at the Networkers Conference compared telepresence to teleporting from Star Trek, and said that he saw the technology as a potential billion dollar market for Cisco.

Connecting Communities

Telepresence can be used to establish a sense of shared presence or shared space among geographically separated members of a group.

Subsea work

The cost of deep water diving operations is extremely high due to safety regulations, hyperbaric equipment, time spent in decompression, and support vessel costs. Telepresence systems for inspection and teleoperation for repair and maintenance would realise significant cost benefits and also remove divers from hazardous environments.

Hazardous environments

Many other applications in situations where humans are exposed to hazardous situations are readily recognised as suitable candidates for telepresence. Mining, bomb disposal, military operations, rescue of victims from fire, toxic atmospheres, or even hostage situations, are some examples.

Pipeline inspection

Small diameter pipes, otherwise inaccessible for examination, can now be viewed using pipeline video inspection.

Remote surgery

The possibility of being able to project the knowledge and the physical skill of a surgeon over long distances has many attractions. Thus, again there is considerable research underway in the subject. (Locally controlled robots are currently being used for joint replacement surgery as they are more precise in milling bone to receive the joints.) The armed forces have an obvious interest since the combination of telepresence, teleoperation, and telerobotics can potentially save the lives of battle casualties by allowing them prompt attention in mobile operating theatres by remote surgeons.

Education

The benefits of enabling schoolchildren to take an active part in exploration have been shown by the JASON and the NASA Ames Research Center programs. The ability of a pupil, student, or researcher to explore an otherwise inaccessible location is a very attractive proposition; For example, locations where the passage of too many people is harming the immediate environment or the artifacts themselves, e.g. undersea exploration of coral reefs, ancient Egyptian tombs, and more recent works of art.

Advertising and sales

Tour operators and property agents could use telepresence to allow potential customers to sample holiday locations and view properties remotely making commitments.

Entertainment

Telepresence systems could be incorporated into theme or nature parks to allow observers to travel through coral reefs or explore underground caves. Inamusement parks, the elderly or infirm could experience the thrill of live roller coaster rides without risk.

In the games, users can interact using telepresence, sharing robots to interact one human with another (paired objects as remote surrogate actors). In other words, if one partner shakes the object, the remote object also shakes.

Telepresence Art

In 1998, Diller and Scofidio created the "Refresh", an Internet-based art installation that juxtaposed a live web camera with recorded videos staged by professional actors. Each image was accompanied with a fictional narrative which made it difficult to distinguish which was the live web camera.

In 1993, Eduardo Kac and Ed Bennett created a telepresence installation "Ornitorrinco on the Moon", for the international telecommunication arts festival "Blurred Boundaries" (Entgrenzte Grenzen II). It was coordinated by Kulturdata, in Graz, Austria, and was connected around the world.[1]

Telepresence and AI

Marvin Minsky was one of the pioneers of intelligence-based mechanical robotics and telepresence. He designed and built some of the first mechanical hands with tactile sensors, visual scanners, and their software and computer interfaces. He also influenced many robotic projects outside of MIT, and designed and built the first LOGO "turtle."

Commercial Telepresence Systems

Cisco Systems is the Telepresence system introduced in 2006 that caught the worlds attention. The first systems from Cisco were the first to offer 1080p, spatial audio, and were as simple to use as a phone call. Regus has recently signed a deal with Cisco to provide 50 TelePresence systems, which will be rolled out in the leading business cities around the world including New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney and Paris. [2]

HeadThere, Inc. has announced the Giraffe Video Conferencing Robot. The Giraffe is a mobile robot that can be moved around its location by remote control using the Internet. The Giraffe allows a user to hear, see, and speak at a far away location, just like traditional videoconferencing. This fusion of robotics and videoconferencing allows a user to feel like they are at the robot's location. Because people near the robot can see and hear the user, they interact with him as if he were truly present. In a sense, the robot acts as a stand-in for the user.

MILO is one of the first commercially available telepresence robots—other than research robots—that came to market in 2005. The company's Early Adopters Program currently uses 15 robots to explore various applications within the telepresence space, including Elderly Care, Commercial Security, Process Automation, Real-Time Inventory Tracking, and more.

TrueLook is a product that was produced by a company called Perceptual Robotics in the mid 1990s. Perceptual Robotics, Inc. (PRI) used the term Telepresence to describe its remote controlled robotic web cams because of the sense of "being there" that they provided. Later renamed TrueLook, the product still exists although the company does not. PRI was sold to divine, inc. in 2002 and the TrueLook product was later acquired by Silk Road Technologies, where it remains available.

PEBBLES is claimed by its developer, Telbotics, to be the world's first fully functioning 'telepresence' application - a solution for hospitalized, homebound and special needs children. PEBBLES is intended to connect children to their home classroom, allowing for participation in classroom activities and social contact. PEBBLES was first used in 1997 at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and was launched in 2001 in the United States at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital. The technology is now in use in Canada, US, and the Netherlands.

POLYCOMmanufactures a telepresence system, which they call RealPresence. This system is claimed, by the developer, to offer high-definition video in cinematic view, stereo surround audio and high resolution content in an immersive telepresence environment.

See also

• Telerobotics
• Teledildonics
• Unotchit
• Virtual Fixture

References

• "Telepresence" (Minsky 1980; Sheridan 1992a; Barfield, Zelter, Sheridan, & Slater 1995; Welch, Blackmon, Liu, Mellers, & Stark 1996),
• "Virtual presence" (Barfield et al., 1995),
• "Being there" (Reeves 1991; Heeter 1992; Barfield et al., 1995; Zhoa 2003),
• "A perceptual illusion of non-mediation "(Lombard & Ditton 1997)
• "The suspension of disbelief" (Slater & Ushoh 1994)
• unknown title (Sheridan, 1992, 1992; Barfield & Weghorst, 1993;Slater & Usoh, 1994; Barfield, Sheridan, Zeltzer, Slater, 1995)

External links

• http://tele-immersion.citris-uc.org - Teleimmersion home page at University of California, Berkeley. Research focuses on virtual dance performances and human interaction with virtual objects.
• http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/teleimmersion - Tele-Immersive Environment for EVErbody (TEEVE) project at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=3&indi=50 - A Review of Tele-Immersive Applications in the CAVE Research Network.
• HumanProductivityLab.com - Telepresence News, Research and Analysis
• Presence-Research.org - (tele-)presence resource site
• Transparent Telepresence Research Group
• Telepresence.org - Research in Technologies of Presence
• Telepresence medicine: General
• [3] - Telepresence News, Research and Analysis
• Sensing Beds
• Project thereNow: Telepresence Research in Education
• PEBBLEStelepresence robot - iStudent
• TrueLook (Perceptual Robotics)
• The Presence Project - Stanford University.