Communications of the ACM
Beam Me to My Meeting!
Credit: Spiegel
European scientists have integrated robotics, video, and various sensor and display technologies to transport someone into a geographically distant meeting room under the auspices of the 'Beaming through augmented media for natural networked gatherings' (Beaming) project. The European Union-funded effort utilizes immersive virtual reality technologies in which a robotic avatar functions as the meeting participant's eyes, ears, and mouth.
Participants wear a head-mounted display equipped with sensors, enabling them to receive the avatar's video and audio feeds in three dimensions. The two-way connection also enables a participant's movements and responses to be mimicked by the robot.
A key challenge for the Beaming collaborators has been development of the system's framework data architecture, which defines how all the visual, audio, motion, and pressure data is packaged and relayed between the participant and their remote environment. It also sets up how the three-dimensional model of the remote location is produced for the participant to generate a strong sense of presence for them.
"The purpose of the framework is to make Beaming entirely independent of the hardware or software involved," says project participant Stephen Dunne. "You'll be able to use any robot or any sensor, for example."
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Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
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