Tele-Immersion Concepts

Abstract

Tele-immersive systems development is always driven as well as restricted by the available immersive technology. Hence, existing such systems are described mainly from a technological point of view; their conceptual description is usually limited to the description of a scenario that is implementable with or circumvents the limitations of the chosen technology. This focus on technology makes it difficult to compare systems' concepts; moreover, it has led to different views on tele-immersion in different fields, such as remotely controlled robots, immersive video conferencing, and tele-collaboration. In this work, we give a general, structured principle to describe the conceptual part of any tele-immersion system. This principle naturally unifies the different views on tele-immersion. Our idea is based on the insight that, in order to be general, immersion must be described separately for each direction of communication. We characterize communication between locations using a graph; for each directed edge of this graph, we describe immersion as operations on volumes. Using this principle, we define a typology, which enables the comparison and enumeration of tele-immersion concepts. We apply this typology to survey the concepts of existing tele-immersion systems and thereby demonstrate how three well-known tele-immersive scenarios-Marvin Minsky's tele-operated robot, the Office of the Future, and the asymmetric Beaming scenario-integrate naturally. We show how the general principle can be utilized conveniently to grasp conceptual ideas in tele-immersion, such as direct interaction, locational presence, spatial consistency, symmetries, and self-inclusion.

Why Is Virtual Reality Interesting for Philosophers?

“…In social VR, what exactly is the relationship between the phenomenal content locally instantiated in the brains of multiple users and shared virtual content created by causal interactions distributed over different machines and artificial media? Social VR is a field that needs a combination of new technological approaches and rigorous conceptual analysis, for instance with regard to the concept of "tele-immersion" (for an excellent example, see Ohl, 2017). The first contribution computer scientists can and certainly will make lies in the field of interface design: For the special domain of social VR, what would be the most efficient and reliable interfaces linking human brains via BCI-coupling and shared VR?…”

“…In social VR, what exactly is the relationship between the phenomenal content locally instantiated in the brains of multiple users and shared virtual content created by causal interactions distributed over different machines and artificial media? Social VR is a field that needs a combination of new technological approaches and rigorous conceptual analysis, for instance with regard to the concept of “tele-immersion” (for an excellent example, see Ohl, 2017 ).…”

On the possible phenomenological autonomy of virtual realities

“…Current research into understanding virtuality spans a wide range of topics, both philosophical and technical. From understanding the connection between the experience of virtual 'presence' and the notion of selfhood (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009) and exploring how virtual reality experiences might shed light on our theories of the human mind and consciousness (Friston, 2010;Hohwy, 2014;Clark, 2015), or how the virtual domain establishes a sense of temporality (Clowes & Chrisley, 2012), to understanding the phenomenon of 'tele-immersion' (Ohl, 2018), virtual embodiment and re-embodiment (Petkova & Ehrsson, 2008;Cohen et al, 2012;2014a;2014b;De Oliveira et al, 2016) to the experience (and graduation of) realness (Metzinger, 2018) and through matters of epistemology such as understanding the distinction between dreaming, or other suboptimal epistemic situations and waking experience (e.g. Bortolotti, 2015;2016) and the question of assigning personal identity to other agents (Madary & Metzinger, 2016), which itself poses further questions of an ethical and legal character (for much more on the perspectives of philosophy and virtuality, see Metzinger, 2018).…”

A novel solution for an efficient tele‐collaborating in surgical medical education: Three‐dimensional tele‐immersion systems

“…Due to technological advances, it is now, technically, possible to achieve the same outcome by using a tele‐immersion system, a platform that facilitates tele‐collaboration for medical students who are located in different geographical areas. The tele‐immersive system facilitates the three‐dimensional (3D) virtual presence of an expert in any physical location regardless of the geographical region …”

“…This plays a significant role in education in general but more specifically in SME for collaboration between medical students and the expert lecturer in a novel area of medical research . However, there are still limitations in terms of bandwidth requirements for high‐quality video transmission, delays in the transmission of images, and issues of compression.…”