PRESENTED BY Geenas GS S7, ECE Roll.No: 7215

 Introduction

 Tele-immersion may be the next major development in information technology. Using tele-immersion, you can visit an individual across the world without stepping a foot outside.  Tele-Immersion is a technology by which you’ll interact instantly with your friend on the other side of the globe through a simulated holographic environment.  This technology, which will come along with Internet2, will change the way we work, study and get medical help.

 Tele-Immersion (TI) is defined as the integration of audio and video conferencing, via image- based modeling, with collaborative virtual reality  New medium that enables a user to share a virtual space with remote participants. 

 Immersion in general means a psycho-physical condition which gives the user the illusion that he acts in an environment which is different from the real one.  It combines the display and interaction techniques of virtual reality with new computer- vision technologies.

 In1965 Ivan Sutherland, proposed the concept of the “Ultimate Display”.  “Ultimate Display” described a graphics display that would enable the user to experience a completely computer rendered environment.  This was the beginning of active research into modern graphics, virtual reality and its forerunner - tele-immersion, which was to come later. Ivan Sutherland

 The tele-immersion concept was for the first time demonstrated in May 2000 when three geographically distributed tele-immersion sites were virtually interconnected.  These sites were:  Advanced Network & Services (Armonk, New -York; Dr. Amela Sadagic),  University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia; Dr. Jane Mulligan) and  University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill; Jaron Lanier).

 Two participating sites had the role of acquisition sites (AN&S & University of Pennsylvania) for 3D scene acquisition.  The third one (UNC) was a reconstruction site for reconstruction and display of remote, captured scenes.

Prototype of tele-cubicle at UNC (May 2000) A guest taking part in the tele-immersive session at UNC Left : Philadelphia & right : Armonk( New-York )

 Tele-Immersion has an environment called TIDE(Tele-Immersive Data exploration Environment)  The goal of TIDE is to employ Tele-Immersion techniques to create a persistent environment in which collaborators around the world can engage in long-term exploration and analysis of massive scientific data-sets.  When participants are tele-immersed,, they are able to see and interact with each other and objects in a shared virtual environment. Their presence will be depicted by life-like representations of themselves (avatars)

 The environment will persist even when all the participants have left it.  Participants may even leave messages for their colleagues who can then replay them as a full audio, video and gestural stream.

 All users are separated by hundreds of miles but appear collocated able to see each other as either a video image or as a simplified virtual representation (commonly known as an avatar).  Avatars are generated by real-time, image capture, and modeling techniques.  Each avatar has arms and hands so that they may convey natural gesture such as pointing at areas of interest in the visualization.