Telepresence
A similar or identical concept is telexistence, which was first proposed by Susumu Tachi in Japan in 1980[1] and 1981[2] as patents and the first report was published in Japanese in 1982[3] and in English in 1984.
The term telepresence, a neologism due to the futurist Patrick Gunkel, was introduced to the public in a 1980 article by Minsky, who outlined his vision for an adapted version of the older concept of teleoperation that focused on giving a remote participant a feeling of actually being present at a different location.
[5] One of the first systems to create a fully immersive illusion of presence in a remote location was the Virtual Fixtures platform developed in 1992 at the U.S. Air Force's Armstrong Labs by inventor Louis Rosenberg.
[9] Before TeleSuite, they ran a resort business from which the original concept emerged because they often found businesspeople would have to cut their stays short to participate in important meetings.
Destiny Conferencing licensed its patent portfolio to HP which became the first large company to join the telepresence industry, soon followed by others such as Cisco and Polycom (now called Poly).
Located at the University of Toronto, the Ontario Telepresence Project (OTP) was an interdisciplinary effort involving social sciences and engineering.
Its final report stated that it "...was a three year, $4.8 million pre-competitive research project whose mandate was to design and field trial advanced media space systems in a variety of workplaces in order to gain insights into key sociological and engineering issues.
The OTP, which has ended in December 1994, was part of the International Telepresence Project which linked Ontario researchers to their counterparts in four European nations.
It is also superior to phone conferencing (except in cost), as the visual aspect greatly enhances communications, allowing for perceptions of facial expressions and other body languages.
Benefits include cost-efficiencies resulting from accelerated problem resolution, reductions in downtimes and travel, improvements in customer service and increased productivity.
[16] Sound is generally the easiest sensation to implement with high fidelity, based on the foundational telephone technology dating back more than 130 years.
The prevalence of high quality video conferencing using mobile devices, tablets and portable computers has enabled considerable growth in telepresence robots to help give a better sense of remote physical presence for communication and collaboration in the office, home or school when one cannot be there in person.
A good telepresence strategy puts the human factors first, focusing on visual collaboration configurations that closely replicate the brain's innate preferences for interpersonal communications, separating from the unnatural "talking heads" experience of traditional videoconferencing.
[21] Rarely will a telepresence system provide such a transparent implementation with such comprehensive and convincing stimuli that the user perceives no differences from actual presence.
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.
Because most 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.
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.
Mining, bomb disposal, military operations, rescue of victims from fire, toxic atmospheres, deep sea exploration, or even hostage situations, are some examples.
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.
Recently, teleconferencing has been used in medicine (telemedicine or telematics), mainly employing audio-visual exchange, for the performance of real time remote surgical operations – as demonstrated in Regensburg, Germany in 2002.
[25] The benefits of enabling schoolchildren to take an active part in exploration have also been shown by the JASON and the NASA Ames Research Center programs.
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.
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).
This methodology has been used extensively to develop skills in tele-intuition for young people in preparation for the future world of work through the body>data>space / NESTA project "Robots and Avatars" an innovative project explores how young people will work and play with new representational forms of themselves and others in virtual and physical life in the next 10–15 years.
An overview of telepresence in dance and theatre through the last 20 years is given in «Excited Atoms»[28] research document by Judith Staines (2009) which one can download from the On The Move website.
