Telepresence

Telepresence describes the state of feeling present in a remote environment. The higher the degree of immersion, the more it feels the user in the remote environment.

Technical implementation

In order to achieve a feeling of presence in the remote environment, the user is usually represented in the target environment by a teleoperator. This replicated the user's head movements and transmits the camera images from the perspective of the message to the user operator. These images are then displayed to the user on a head- mounted display. So he takes only a true remote area and is mixed into into it. More telepresent sense in which the hearing is of course also possible.

To give the possibility to manipulate the target environment to the user, it is also often connected to a haptic input device to a robot arm.

The concept of telepresence is already being then used by several providers of digital communication systems in a modified meaning, the term " telepresence " if would give participants the impression in high resolution and a representation of the people in almost life-size video- conference telephony, directly opposite each other to sit. In usual parlance, however, the telepresence demarcates by motion sensors and robotics from the video telephony.

Long-range telepresence

To enable long-range movement and not just head movements in the remote environment, be mobile in the remote environment, such as radbasierte, used robots. Most often, the user is sitting in the teleoperation of the robot and controls the long-range movement through input devices such as joysticks.

If the user, however, by its own movement, so walking around, controls the long-range movement of the robot, it is called long-range telepresence. The advantage here is that the depth sensitivity of the motion is consistent with the visual perception, which on the one hand reduces the risk of simulator sickness and allows for others to take advantage of the natural ability of the human navigation.

A major problem is however that the remote environment is usually much larger than the actual environment of the user. Therefore, devices have been developed as a two-dimensional treadmill, which allow the user to traverse infinitely large distances in a limited space. A purely algorithmic solution to this problem is the motion compression dar. The user will without realizing it on a guided towards the visually perceived path, crooked path. The distance traveled and rotate on the spot remain unchanged.

Demarcation to telerobotics

In contrast to telerobotics the main focus is in the telepresence on the mediation of a presence impression that the user should therefore feel on the spot. The goal is to offer the user a completely transparent and thus intuitive interface for remote environment. Therefore, the methods of telepresence are often used in conjunction with a virtual reality.