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Telepresence

– what impact will it really have?

Carol Daunt from LearnTel discusses how recent advances in


telepresence technologies are helping companies create a
sense of shared presence among distributed teams, and points
to likely next steps, including teleimmersion that will radically
alter our concept of time and geography in the workplace.

T elepresence has moved out of the


laboratories and onto a screen near you.
The first conference on telepresence was
to give a convincing telepresence experience.
I’m not so sure. I believe that you can achieve
some sense of telepresence on the telephone
held in 2006 and the organisers claimed that if you are speaking to someone with whom
over the next decade virtually every Global you have an emotional connection.
5000 company would adopt telepresence.
A variety of Fortune 1000 organisations are A second question is how much ‘control’
already using it, reporting both satisfaction is necessary for telepresence to occur? Is
and a strong return on their investment. the ability to manipulate a remote object
or environment an important aspect of real
The industry hasn’t come to a shared telepresence systems?
understanding of what telepresence is or
a definition that everyone agrees on. In Certainly the telepresence experience is
general, telepresence refers to a set of enhanced by high definition video and audio
technologies that allow a person to feel as and a degree of control over the environment.
if they are present at a location other than This appears to be the premise on which
their true location. current telepresence systems are based.

How much technology is needed to create What’s currently on offer?


such an environment? Some would argue In 2006, we saw four major releases of
that sophisticated technologies are required telepresence solutions. HP was first to market
71 THE STRATEGIC PATH TO CONVERGING COMMUNICATIONS
• Current evolution is toward establishing
a sense of shared presence
• Recent technology advances create a true – albeit costly
– sense of presence
• Next step will be ‘teleimmersion’ merging telepresence
and virtual worlds

with its Halo Collaboration Studio that is All of these are excellent advances in
described as enabling “people in different videoconference technology. They especially
locations to communicate in a vivid, face- address the problem of eye contact, which
to-face environment in real time. Users are we have long known plays a large role in
able to see and hear one another’s physical conversation and group communication. They
and emotional reactions to conversation and have high definition video and audio and
information as it is being shared.” certainly create a sense of being in the same
room. However, they do it at great cost.
Polycom was next to market with high
definition telepresence solutions “that Applications for Telepresence
enable people working at a distance to At the moment, telepresence appears to be
communicate as if they were all in the same about videoconferencing – and this may limit
room. Solutions that deliver the finest detail
our thinking about applications.
and nuance of expression in voice, video and
content – all over lower bandwidths.”
The major, and most common, use of
Cisco followed in October 2006 with telepresence is to establish a sense of
its TelePresence Meeting solution that shared presence among geographically
“combines life-size, ultra high definition video separated members of a group. With the
images, spatial audio, a specially designed increase in distributed workplaces and
environment, and interactive elements to teams, this will become an important use
create the feeling of being ‘in person’ with of the technology. It can overcome the
participants in remote locations.” isolation of the teleworker and strengthen
connections between teams that may be
Tandberg came to market with Experia, dispersed around the globe. One of the
the adaptive telepresence solution that most interesting applications I’ve seen is
“creates the optimal across-the-table visual the virtual assistant. She works from home
communication experience”. but has a continual virtual presence at her
SEE EVEN MORE INFO AT WWW.STRATEGICPATH.COM.AU 72
desk hundreds of kilometres away. Through A glimpse at virtual worlds
a single screen telepresence system she Where does telepresence end and virtual
‘appears’ at her desk in the office and people worlds begin? Telepresence actually had
talk to her as if she were there. its beginnings in the virtual world of
gaming. With the development of online
If we expand our thinking of telepresence environments such as Second Life, we’re
beyond videoconferencing, then a raft of beginning to see the two come together.
applications become possible. These include: Already there have been videoconferences
between real people in the real world to
• where humans are exposed to hazardous virtual people (avatars) in the Second Life
situations eg, bomb disposal, rescue of virtual world. Residents of Second Life are
victims from fire, toxic atmospheres; certainly experiencing everything from virtual
• environments that are difficult to work in travel to dating (and more!) in the virtual
eg, mining and undersea work; world. There is a high level of telepresence in
• remote telehealth, especially haptic many of these activities.
teleoperation where the user feels some
Sun’s Virtual Workplace is another example
approximation of the weight, firmness, size,
of the merging of real and virtual worlds.
and/or texture of the remote objects being On any given day, over 50 per cent of Sun’s
manipulated; workforce is remote. Sun has built a virtual
• virtual excursions – school children are 3D environment in which employees (on-
already going onto the reef with a diver and off-site) can work, share documents,
and into space to save astronauts; and meet with colleagues using natural voice
• virtual travel – experience the delights communication. Inhabitants of the virtual
office building can work together in planned
of anywhere in the world from your own
meetings, or can talk informally in unplanned
home; encounters. The spatial layout of this 3D
• teletourism – the reverse of the above world, coupled with the immersive audio,
where you go on holidays but use tele- provides strong cognitive cues that enhance
presence to connect you to the office. collaboration.
73 THE STRATEGIC PATH TO CONVERGING COMMUNICATIONS
Where to from here? There is no doubt that telepresence will
The next step will be the merging of impact upon you in the near future.
telepresence and virtual world technologies Within five years we’ll see the merging
to give us the ultimate experience of of technologies as outlined above,
tele-immersion. Research and work are and telepresence will go far beyond
already well advanced in this field, and videoconferencing. I hesitate to predict what
through the synthesis of networking and it will involve, but it will be much more
media technologies we’ll have enhanced affordable than the current offerings and
collaborative environments. In this tele- operate on a more intuitive level.
immersive environment, computers will
recognise the presence and movements of Many of us will live our lives in both the
individuals and objects, track those images, real and virtual worlds and collaborate with
and then permit them to be projected in clients and colleagues in both. Our sense of
realistic, multiple, geographically distributed place and time will be radically altered as we
immersive environments where individuals can move in and out of different geographical
interact with each other and with computer- and time zones as if we were actually there.
generated models. The concept of time in the office will also
change as we access our colleagues from
Mobility is also an important factor in future wherever we are. l
collaboration technology. We’re only a few steps
away from scaled-down, wireless-networked If you’d like to follow telepresence
telepresence products that allow people to developments and access links to
communicate with one another anywhere and more information, visit the
anytime. The 3D workplace described above is Videoconference blog at
just the first of many we will see in the future. http://videoconference.edublogs.org/

Carol Daunt is Founder and CEO of LearnTel Pty Ltd. She has been involved
in the design, application and effective use of eCollaboration technologies
since 1986. She holds a Dip T; Grad Dip Dist Ed; B Ed & M Ed (Research)
– her thesis investigated the nature of interaction in videoconferencing.
She has been published in numerous journals and is a frequent speaker at
international conferences. Copies of some of her papers and articles can be
downloaded at http://www.learntel.com.au

SEE EVEN MORE INFO AT WWW.STRATEGICPATH.COM.AU 74

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