Short Range Wireless
Bringing reality to virtual reality
Graham Tootell looks at how a cutting edge virtual reality gaming headset could make immersive telepresence a real possibility
T
elepresence is not a new concept. Many are already familiar with the concept of ‘life-like’ video
conferencing and while early adopters may have had poor experiences in terms of image and audio quality, the technology has matured significantly.
Despite this, the idea that one can be immersed within a remote environment - to look around and interact with a room that they are not standing in still seems far- fetched. However, a cutting edge virtual reality gaming headset may provide the missing piece of the puzzle in terms of hardware.
The Oculus Rift (OR) has revolutionised the world of gaming by bringing immersive reality to the industry at an affordable price. While its current use is to provide a sense of virtual reality, the OR provides an opportunity beyond gaming. It allows engineers to realise their own ‘real-life’ applications.
In doing so, the OR opens up the possibility for a concept I call immersive telepresence. Essentially, this is a video communications system and means of controlling it such that it simulates complete user immersion within a remote location.
The availability of appropriate hardware is not the issue. On the contrary, a state of immersive telepresence can be achieved with a tablet computer, an OR device and a steerable stereo camera that mimics a pair of human eyes. Immersion in a remote location can be a
difficult concept to grasp at first. A clearer example for those that have not experienced the OR is to think about using a remote controlled car. You can see the car and control its movements using a remote control, but in order to be immersed in that experience and control the car from the point of view of a driver in it, you would need a camera in the car to see those images. Even then – you can still only see an image from within the car on a monitor. To achieve that fully immersive experience, you need to ‘be’ the camera, which is where the OR comes into play. The stereo camera forms the remote head. Using the OR to generate the
12 November 2013
is the issue. It’s the reliability of wireless communications, image processing capabilities and security that are the obstacles to making it viable and useable. Specifically, to use the OR to achieve a sense of immersive telepresence is associated with a number of significant challenges. The most important of these is latency. To make the mimicry of human movements by a remote camera a positive user experience relies on the ability to achieve minimal latency across the connection. With conventional control devices, the user consciously manipulates some interface to achieve their goal and as humans we adapt to long latencies. For immersive applications, the experience needs to be accepted at the subconscious level and that means keeping latency in the few tens of milliseconds.
Components in Electronics
see with what feels like their own eyes, are video images, which are processed and transmitted to the screen in their physical location. So, if the image is degraded by way of the bandwidth not being sufficiently high, there is a danger that image artefacts seen by the user will disrupt the user experience.
Despite these testing hurdles, the levels of latency and bandwidth can be resolved. By selecting the appropriate off the shelf hardware, the immersive telepresence phenomenon is already quite compelling. Latency and bandwidth can be reduced and increased respectively by developing bespoke sets of hardware that are tightly integrated. However, one has to bear in mind that when doing this, the cost needs to be kept to a minimum if immersive telepresence is to be favoured for industrial use.
immersive effect and connecting it to the remote cameras, it is possible for the user’s vision to be effectively ‘transported’ to this location. The remote head can mimic the user’s head movements in such a way that when the user turns his/her head, the camera copies this movement to give the effect of the user looking around the remote room.
Wireless challenge While immersive telepresence may seem like an outlandish concept it is not the hardware or technology that’s required that
The consequences of a latency that is too high are varied. If a user is immersed at the subconscious level to interact with a remote location, the remote head must mimic their movements almost exactly as they would in real life. Otherwise, the user can suffer disorientation; nausea and the experience will be undermined. Achieving bandwidth levels that are capable of dealing with the data transmission required in an immersive telepresence session is another significant challenge. Video communications are growing in everyday use and the quality continues to improve. However, it is a notoriously bandwidth-hungry process and if the network cannot cope with the data travelling over it, the user experience is poor.
More specifically, although the user feels immersed into the remote location when using the modified OR, the images they can
Medical industry Within the healthcare setting remote monitoring is starting to become more commonplace due to demands of lifestyle where patients want to remain at home with long term conditions or where secondary care organisations are looking to the community healthcare teams for post surgical follow-up and long term rehabilitation. However the needs within the community are becoming far more sophisticated especially with the increasing demand of post surgical care (in some cases which can be as soon as 3 hours post surgery) within the community. Immersive telepresence may be the answer to such situations where the patients can have a remote follow up with the surgeon and feel like they are in the medical setting, therefore ensuring that patients adhere to their medication regimes and are applying proper methods to wound care and healing. This will reduce the risk of readmission and complications that can be costly to a healthcare organisation
Looking further down the line, advances
in robotics are making it easier and more cost-effective to perform advanced medical procedures such as remote surgery. These developments enable new methods of training clinicians in difficult surgical procedures or to simulate highly complex scenarios, which require rapid decision- making that can make the difference between life and death. By combining immersive telepresence technology with advanced robotics, it may be possible for medical professionals to actually interact with a remote location as well as look around it.
Immersive telepresence has the potential to be the remote monitoring of the future to enable more patients to be at home in a safe and clinically friendly environment, reducing clinical burden and optimising follow up outcomes.
Of course, this depends on how
effectively engineers can overcome the issues mentioned above. Drawing on its experience in wireless communications and image processing, Plextek is currently undertaking a project using the Oculus Rift to bring the latency down to a few tens of milliseconds and attempting to resolve the bandwidth issues.
Plextek Consulting |
www.plextek.com
Graham Tootell is Senior Technology Consultant at Plextek Consulting
www.cieonline.co.uk
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