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Education Technology

Tele-Immersion at UC Berkeley 73

Posted by michael from the holoprof9000 dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Tele-immersion is a technology which allows cooperative interaction between groups of distant people working in the same virtual environment. At the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley, interdisciplinary teams are deploying this technology. It involves three real-time steps: taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network, and implanting them in a virtual world. For example, it will allow students and professors on different campuses to meet -- virtually -- and discuss -- lively -- while being in ancient sites of Greece or Italy. The technology offers more promises than academics discussions. Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him. Of course, this technology is facing some hurdles, such as the cost involved to model you with so many cameras. This summary shows you some details about the image processing involved in this project."
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Tele-Immersion at UC Berkeley More

Tele-Immersion at UC Berkeley

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  • Nurse (Score:2, Funny)

    by mekanizer ( 823259 )
    It would be better if I would tell the Nurse...

  • Good idea (Score:1, Funny)

    by dickeya ( 733264 )
    That will keep tuition prices down.

  • Other Universities doing this (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:08PM (#10668587)
    Penn and Brown are doing this too.

    http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~sequence/ [upenn.edu] http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/research/telei/home.h tml [brown.edu]

    And Internet2 has this type of technology as one of its goals. See http://www-pagines.fib.upc.es/~si/treballs-SI2001/ e4024048/Tele-immersion.htm [fib.upc.es]

  • Telepresense: together, or apart? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:09PM (#10668592)
    I have a general question for the /.ers out there: do you feel that this kind of technology will tend to bring people together more, or apart?

    I mean, when you can be 100 cool places at the flip of a button, why settle for wherever you are right now? Same with social stuff - why "put up with" the boring people next door instead of flipping on the immersive internet and talking to others who share your interests?

    This is happenning already. Most of my communication with friends is IM, email, or cell phone. The amount of face-to-face talking, in real life, is astoundingly low. Is this a good thing? I mean, I can keep tabs with people around the country - and around the world. But it's not the same.

    I can see a lot of legitimate business uses for this technology, and who wouldn't want to be able to attend famous lecturer's sessions without the need to travel (or fear of being caught sleeping)? I'm just worried that it will become an even stronger isolating force in our society.

    Also, will telepresense bring about more outsourcing - why pay for a secretary who's right there, when for 1/10th the price you can have one from India, by telepresence, for the 90% or whatever things that need done that don't require actual presense.

    Just some questions to think about.

    Cheers,
    Justin Wick

    • Re:Telepresense: together, or apart? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:27PM (#10668716)

      ...why pay for a secretary who's right there...

      Because she's there when you need her. I've never had a private secretary, but shared experience is that they are worth at least double what they are usually paid.

    • Kafkaesque (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:33PM (#10668767) Homepage Journal
      I'm reminded of "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka. The absurdist tale is really all about the alienation of modern Man. We exist in vast societies that even as they become larger make our role in them and ability to cope smaller.

      Does our fracturing into interest-based communities bode ill for the future? I'm not sure, but it does seem that at least here in the United States it has helped to create a society where people talk past each other, avoiding unpleasant in-person discussions about social issues or political issues. Instead we retreat behind virtual walls, haul out Blogger, and start pounding on each other.

      It is of course possible that I'm looking at this the wrong way, because as towns and cities become increasingly impersonal, gobbled up by cloned shopping malls, the need to find people you can relate to on any level increases. Slashdot is a great example of this. How many people in my home town with whom I could share Slashdotish interests could I actually meet through random encounters in the computer section of the bookstore?

      I guess this sort of immersive virtual technology is just like most technology in that it is value neutral. It all depends on how we humans make use of it.

      • How many people in my home town with whom I could share Slashdotish interests could I actually meet through random encounters in the computer section of the bookstore?

        Alot more if you'd stop posting on slashdot and go to those bookstores ;-)

    • I have to suggest that maybe being connected in the sense that this article describes is close enough to "real" face-to-face communicate as to fulfull any additional human need.

      From a philisophical standpoint, being face-to-face is really just light, sound, and feelings being transmitted to and interpreted by your brain. If a virtual reality system (or whatever it might be) can adequatly stimulate these senses, I see no psycological problems with being "less connected" in a geographical sense. I think tec
      • From a philisophical standpoint, being face-to-face is really just light, sound, and feelings being transmitted to and interpreted by your brain

        Please to include a filter on the "feelings" in the vr software, for those of us for whom the "feelings" transmission has been overwhelmingly negative in nature.
    • I believe this questions is thoroughly answered in "The Age of Spiritual Machines" -- phenomenal book (if you haven't already read it)
  • [sarcasm]And thank you for the summary![/sarcasm]

  • Diabetic? Get real (Score:2, Insightful)

    by donutz ( 195717 )
    Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him

    Why would a diabetic need a nurse miles away to tell him how to give himself an injection? Shouldn't he already know how to do this? Or are we talking about amnesiac diabetics?

  • Up-Front Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:14PM (#10668632)

    This is neat, but what is the minimum cost for a setup? All kinds of nifty communication technologies have been envisioned, but the cost and compatibility is always the deal-breaker.

    Often the cost of upkeep on systems exceeds their actual worth.

  • Use this for Porn (Score:4, Funny)

    by wheelbarrow ( 811145 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:17PM (#10668643)
    Porn would be a good cash cow for funding the research.

  • It's been done, two years ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by GrAfFiT ( 802657 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:17PM (#10668648) Homepage
    In France, the Research and Development dept of France Telecom [francetelecom.com] has been doing this since 2002.
    Here's some nice flash presentation [francetelecom.fr], some documentation [francetelecom.fr] and a PDF [francetelecom.fr]
    And they use H263+ and G722 !

  • Everyone already knows its real purpose... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brxndxn ( 461473 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:19PM (#10668663)
    For example, it will allow students and professors on different campuses to meet -- virtually -- and discuss -- lively -- while being in ancient sites of Greece or Italy.

    No, this will be used so that horny people can play 'student and professor' virtually.. I mean, I read this and thought, "Wow, now I can do Paris Hilton without getting a disease."

    In other words, the main purpose of this is porn. Shuddup.. PORN.

  • Cost limitation? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tracer_Bullet82 ( 766262 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:28PM (#10668730)
    Not really.

    On days like these, I cant help to love capitalism.

    Given enough 'return on investments'; that is a smooth talking entreprenuer, it will be funded.

    a viable project would be golf lessons. I'm sure it wil be popular with the suit types. Cost have never really been an issue.

    The nurse thing works well too. Of course, "that kind" of nurse. :)

  • 48 Cameras (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:35PM (#10668777)
    ...taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network

    That should generate more than a little network traffic.

  • Novel idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:35PM (#10668782)
    Instead of having 48 cameras around the subject so you can select a vantage point from any angle, why not just have one camera and ask the lazy bum to move around a little?

    Besides, I'd rather not be looked at from all sides at once. Of 48 cameras, odds are at least one is looking exactly up your nose.

  • ooh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Matt_Joyce ( 816842 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:39PM (#10668803) Journal

    "Dealing with such large amounts of data is an enormous task--just to start the cameras you must press 50 start buttons," he said.


    pfft. sounds sophisticated. not.
    Anyone else think 48 cameras seem like overkill ?

    This is not the future of telepresence.
    Plow the cash into better avatar modeling I say.
    If your not going to be there (wherever there is), why project images of yourself at all, just send an agent.

    Gibson, Stevenson and Egan were on the right track regarding avatars.

  • Why journalists are annoying (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zatz ( 37585 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:43PM (#10668833) Homepage
    "Dealing with such large amounts of data is an enormous task -- just to start the cameras you must press 50 start buttons," he said.

    They always select a quote which paints you as a simpleton.
  • It involves three real-time steps: taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network, and implanting them in a virtual world.

    OK, so when does it get real enough for porn? That is, after all, the goal to which all web technology aspires!

  • thats an amazing feat... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JeanBaptiste ( 537955 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @06:54PM (#10668898)
    from summary: "Tele-immersion is a technology which allows cooperative interaction between groups of distant people working in the same virtual environment. " Wow, considering we barely have cooperative interaction between groups of different people working in the same office building

  • ..Back in my day, tele-immersion was sitting in front of the TV for 15 hours a day!

  • Offshorer/Outsourcer's wet dream (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shibuya_boy ( 66299 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @07:41PM (#10669165)
    The big use for this technology will be companies that are offshoring high value jobs to low wage countries. Communication has been the only effective barrier to this happening... the more stuff like this comes out the worse the job market looks in high wage countries.

    If the tech is "real" enough then people like sales and management, thought to be immune to the whole offshoring thing, will be that much less safe.

  • The summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by Stanistani ( 808333 ) on Friday October 29, 2004 @08:17PM (#10669313) Homepage Journal
    (To save poor Ronald's site from being cash, er slashdotted)
    Meeting Your Professor in Ancient Sicily
    Tele-immersion is a technology which allows cooperative interaction between groups of distant people working in the same virtual environment.
    At the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley, interdisciplinary teams are deploying this technology. It involves three real-time steps: taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network, and implanting them in a virtual world. For example, it will allow students and professors on different campuses to meet -- virtually -- and discuss -- lively -- while being in ancient sites of Greece or Italy.
    The technology offers more promises than academics discussions. Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him. Of course, this technology is facing some hurdles, such as the cost involved to model you with so many cameras. But read more...
    Here is the inroduction of the Daily Californian article, which really is a news release from the University of California.
    UC Berkeley students may soon be able to meet professors at UC Davis in ancient Sicily for lively intellectual discussions. Recent visual computer science advances by Ruzena Bajcsy, director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley, may make such interactions possible.
    Bajcsy's technology takes pictures of a subject in her laboratory from 48 different cameras and combines them into a 3-D image. The image can then be placed into historical Sicily, one of the three cyberspace environments created so far. But how does this work?
    Here is an illustration of the three-step process of the project: real-time image processing, followed by real-time data transmission and finally real-time image rendering. (Credit: CITRIS)
    You'll find more details about this process at the CITRIS Tele-Immersion Project home page, which adds this about the above image.
    First, a three dimensional structure and appearance of the scene is captured by processing image data from multiple viewpoints using stereo algorithm. Second, the acquired scene information is then transmitted to remote sites through high-bandwidth networks, where lastly it is combined with the interactions of the user and displayed dichoptically to reproduce realistic scene rendering.
    And what can we expect from such a technology?
    "Bajcsy has been really visionary with all of this. We've imagined these things and she's been working with us to make them real," said David Goldberg, director of the UC system Center of Humanities, a collaborator on the project. Art historians, anthropologists and archeologists working with Goldberg have imagined a virtual museum using Bajcsy's technology where both experts and the public could virtually pick up objects and study them.
    The new insights could be far-reaching. Bajcsy aims to impact common people, by studying how people behave and trust each other in cyber environments. Specifically, one could study the difference between cyberspace interaction and a face-to-face interaction, or between interactions where the whole body or just the face or hands are visualized.
    However, this technolgy faces several hurdles, such as confusing colors between the user's clothes and the virtual environment. But there are others, such as the fact that this technology is not -- currently -- wireless, and that this huge number of cameras invoves a hefty pricetag.
    Currently, a cable is required to transmit the large amount of information from the two sites to the digital environment. The cable is expensive and can only be used between the two sites, but Bajcsy hopes to make the technology available to many social scientists who have only meager funding.
    "Digitizing (approximately) 50 cameras into the computer is not easy," said Professor Takeo Kanade, a Carnegie Mellon professor who has performed similar research. "Dealing with such large amounts of data is an enormous task -- just to start the cameras you must press 50 start buttons," he said.
    Sources: Erica Rosenberg, The Daily Californian, October 27, 2004; and various websites
  • teledildonics
  • It involves three real-time steps: taking images of a subject with 48 cameras, transmitting the images over a network, and implanting them in a virtual world... Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him.

    Yes, because this is currently impossible with a single camera... or just a video.

  • Imagine a nurse telling a diabetic how to make an insulin injection while being far away from him.

    Sorry, but I'm having trouble imagining a person who is too poor or too remotely located to be able to visit a nurse in person, but somehow has access to a state-of-the-art tele-immersion VR whatsit.

  • And why is he posting an article on a subject that was featured in Scientific American [sciam.com] in 2001?
    • Do a little research on Mr. Piquepaille and you'll find out that this is his standard MO:

      1) Plagiarize a story about technology written elsewhere; re-package it and post it on his site
      2) Submit story to Slashdot in order to drive huge number of hits to his site
      3) Sell ads to web advertisers
      4) Profit!

  • This is kind of interesting as the University of Tokyo came out with something similar with their Tele-Existance/Crystal Vision/X-tal Vision projects.

    (Remember the article on slashdot about the "cloaking" technology they were working on?)

    Though their goal appeared to be to project a user's image onto a robot dummy and have the robot do things remotely. (Which is probably overkill anyway.)

    A while back, I wrote an article on how this could be applied to education, interestingly enough, which can b

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