Telepresence: Star Trek Style

According to Wikipedia, Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location. It requires that the senses of the user, or users, be provided with such stimuli as to give the feeling of being in that other location. Additionally, the user(s) may be given the ability to affect the remote location. In this case, the user’s position, movements, actions, voice, etc. may be sensed, transmitted and duplicated in the remote location to bring about this effect. Therefore information may be traveling in both directions between the user and the remote location.

At its base level Telepresence can constitute a television set since it stimulates our primary senses of vision and hearing. As the screen size increases, the sense of immersion increases too. Let’s say for example iMAX screens or even large corporate video conference environments. At its highest level, Telepresence can become a Star Trek style virtual presence in 3D. It would seem that virtual presence concepts are far from reality and only hold place in sci-fi movies. Well, the YouTube video below will prove you wrong. It is very much a reality and several companies are working on it big time.

Cisco Telepresence Magic