Title : Physical Remote Presence



Project Lead : Sameer Kishore From : EventLab, Universitat de Barcelona (None)

Dates : from -- to 2013-12-10 15:26:31

Description :

Motivation and objectives :
Our group is collaborating with UCL Computer Science in constructing a system whereby a person (visitor) in one place can be physically present in a remote place (the destination) and interact with the people there. The objective of this work would be to carry out a joint experiment where the visitor is represented by a humanoid robot in the destination. The movements of the humanoid robot would be slaved to the movements of the visitor. The visitor wears a full motion capture suit for real-time motion capture, and the visitor experiences the destination through immersive virtual reality. The local people at the destination are tracked through unobtrusive camera tracking. From the point of view of the visitor s/he is in a virtual reality representing in real time the remote destination. From the point of view of the locals they are in their normal surroundings, without wearing any particular devices, and interact with a robot that is a local instantiation of the remote visitor.

Teams :
The study is part of an FP7 EU collaborative project called BEAMING. This project aims to develop science and technology that will give people an illusion of physically being in a different place and allow them to interact with their surroundings and people over there, without actually travelling. There are many highly-reputed partners involved in different aspects of the project such as Starlab (Barcelona, Spain), EventLab (Barcelona, Spain), SSSA (Pisa, Italy), ETH (Zurich, Switzerland), Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Munich, Germany) and many others. See www.beaming-eu.org. The eventLab web page is www.event-lab.orog

Dates :
starting date : 18 April, 2012
ending date : 05 May, 2012

Facilities descriptions :
http://visionair-browser.g-scop.grenoble-inp.fr/visionair/Browser/Catalogs/REACTOR.UK.html

Recordings & Results :
This research involves the development of a system whereby a person (visitor) in one place can be physically present in a remote place (the destination) and interact with the people there. The completed objective of this work was a joint experiment where the visitor was represented by a humanoid robot in the destination. The fundamental research question arising from this work is the extent to which this type of interaction can lead to high quality communication, more than, for example, a shared virtual environment or video conferencing.

Conclusions :
The networked session attracted media attention in both the UK and Spain. The BBC coverage can be viewed at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17905533




Project Images :

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Other project resources :

SummaryProject.pdf


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VISIONAIR / Grenoble INP / 46 avenue Felix Viallet / F-38 031 Grenoble cedex 1 / FRANCE
Project funded by the European Commission under grant agreement 262044