Real improvements on the way

Future technologies by Fiona Harvey

Published: February 14 2003 16:02 | Last Updated: February 14 2003 16:02

The problem with videoconferencing is that it is not very real. With

most of today's systems, though the picture quality may have improved
markedly from the early days of jerky movement and lips out of synch
with the sound, it is still impossible to forget that you are staring at a
screen with a representation of a person many miles away, rather than
engaging in a natural conversation with someone in the same room.

Some people shy away from videoconferencing because of its

unreality: recent research from ACT Teleconferencing, in the UK, found that fears about how
they would look inhibited many people from being comfortable with the technology.

For this reason, computer scientists have been working on a new generation of
videoconferencing that would go a stage further than faces on a screen and voices from a
microphone. Their goal is tele-immersion - a technology that would create three dimensional
real-time images of people that would be so real they could fool our senses into thinking our
far-off interlocutors were in the same room.

It sounds like something from the Holodeck of Star Trek. But with advances in compression
technology, faster networks, and ever increasing processing power, researchers believe they
will be able to create fully immersive virtual reality systems - though it might be two decades
before they come into widespread commercial use, according to Jaron Lanier, a renowned
virtual reality expert who heads up the US's National Tele-Immersion initiative.

Tele-immersion systems are under development at several universities and research

institutes around the world, but they tend to share the same characteristics. They take up
entire rooms, where the subjects of the conference can be surveyed from a variety of angles
by a system of digital cameras, with the information relayed to a central processing system
capable of reassembling the images.

As well as capturing the images through cameras, the systems may attach sensors to parts of
the users' bodies, such as their heads and hands, which relay accurate information on their
movements. As the amount of data such cameras and sensors collate can be huge, the
systems use finely honed compression techniques, and need very fast networks.

The systems also may demand users to wear special headsets or goggles, which present one
image to one eye and a slightly different image to the other eye - mimicking the way that our
eyes see objects from slightly different angles, so that the brain then interprets the image as
three-dimensional.

Some industry observers remain sceptical. Daniel Rasmus, vice-president at Giga Information
Group, believes the technology is still much too intrusive: "The technology itself is distracting,
because you have to have so much stuff to feel that you're immersed that you can't feel that
you're immersed. Like you have to put on a pair of glasses, so that's a bit false." He says that
current videoconferencing is good enough, and people use its shortcomings merely as an
excuse because they do not wish to get to grips with technology.

However, he agrees that the next generation of business people may be more ready to take
up fully immersive teleconferencing: "A 50-year-old executive today would not be willing to put
on goggles, but 50-year-old managers 20 years from now will be willing to do it."

Another major problem for immersive systems remains to be overcome: the sheer amount of
brute processing force required to run these systems, which may generate data at the rate of
terabits per second. Tele-immersion systems that require supercomputers seem unlikely to hit
the mainstream soon.

That is why a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in the US wants to use
the technology over a distributed network, using the same principles as "grid computing",
which yokes many cheap low-power computers together to share their power. They say their
work could deliver tele-immersion systems at a fraction of the price of current systems under
development.

However, Dr Lanier believes that the future of video conferencing on grid-style networks will
be limited, because of latency, or the time lag between data being sent and its successful
reassembly at the other end. He argues: "With any dispersed network like that, working
across the internet, you're inevitably going to be looking at significant latency, however you
slice it up." Latency will render real-time tele-immersion impossible, and make it difficult to
avoid the lip synch problems that have plagued current video conferencing systems.

Accordingly, he stakes his hopes instead on unified hardware systems with large amounts of
processing power. At present, these may still be expensive, but as the cost of computer
hardware continues to fall rapidly, while processing power improves, he believes it will
become possible to develop such systems at a reasonable price.

Yet one problem that remains intractable is the speed of light. No matter how good the
networking technology, fibre optic cables still can only transmit data at the speed of light.
Conferencing over very long distances is thus subject to a short delay, and any delay longer
than about half a second can be picked up on by the human eye and ear. Thus the pretence
of someone far away being in the same room may be impossible.

In the meantime, several intermediate technologies promise to bring us closer to the goal of
immersion. For instance, the European Union has brought together scientists from Sony, BT,
and several universities in its Virtue project.

Virtue stands for Virtual Team User Environment, and consists of a desk with a large plasma
display, and four cameras mounted around it. The speaker must sit in front of the screen, and
can conference with a maximum of two other people at the same time.

The real images from the physical cameras are combined through an image-processing
software system to be made to appear as if they were coming from virtual cameras, placed
behind the screens. This placement means people can look straight into the screens to find
what seems to them to be eye contact with their fellow speakers.

Sony hopes to have products available based on the technology in about two to three years'
time.

Teleportec, a Manchester-based company, takes a more ambitious approach. Its technology

creates life-size three-dimensional "holograms" of the speakers standing at lecterns or sitting
at boardroom tables.

A system of small cameras capture the subject, then transmit the digitised images to the
remote location over a high speed line. At the receiving end, the images are funnelled through
a beam splitter, then projected on to a pane of glass from several angles, which gives a near
3D effect, so that the speaker's image appears to hang in the air behind the podium, before
the audience. With high speed networks allowing a good data rate, alongside the company's
compression technology, there should be little problem with lip synch, according to the
company.

The system is already in use in several schools, enabling virtual teachers to take classes, and
in companies including UPS, Compass and Sky TV.

Likewise, Texas-based Zebra Imaging specialises in creating 3D holographic images. These

have been used to create virtual 3D models of cars for Ford Motor Company, allowing
executives in remote locations to collaborate in examining virtual new car models.

If these intermediate technologies turn out to be good enough, will we still need tele-
immersion? Dr Lanier believes so: "The technology to make it possible is coming together,
and the experience will be so rich that people will demand it. As people get more used to
video conferencing in various forms, their appetite for tele-immersion will only grow."

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