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Maybe You CAN Be Two Places at Once

© Adam Hughes

If you've ever seen any of the myriad of Star Trek programs, you're undoubtedly familiar with the transporting devices used to "Beam me up!". One instant you're standing on a rocky cliff in some strange land, longing to go home after a long day of exploration, and the next you're back in the loving bosom of the mother ship. While this type thing is admittedly far-fetched with the technologies available to us today, there are serious efforts underway which will at least make it seem like you've traveled halfway around the world in seconds ... at least to those around you. One of the more ambitious undertakings in this area is the Tele-Immersion project being run by the Internet2 organization.

Tele-Immersion is the logical but grand next step in the geographically-distributed classrooms that have been developed and implemented in the last few years. While these classrooms generally consist of a netcast of computer images and/or live instructional video, Tele-Immersion promises to be something quite a bit more sophisticated. The vision of this project includes the generation of multiple geographically-distributed "telecubicles" in which principals from each site are represented as 3-D entities. While this may seem like some holographic fantasy as seen in films like the original Star Wars, it has far greater implications than message delivery by a heavenly apparition.

In the Tele-Immersion scenario, an identical cyber workshop would be generated at each of the participating sites, with the local scientists being the only "real" participants in the room. People from other sites would be represented by sophisticated computer generations which would allow for a life-like total experience for everyone involved. This is perhaps the ideal environment for fostering true long-distance collaboration where hands-on participation is needed, as researchers from the different sites could all work on the same virtual model simultaneously.

Because of the obvious technological challenges involved, this project is seen as a perfect medium for tying together the many goals of the Internet2 project. Some of the technologies involved include 3-D environmental scanning, sophisticated projective and display techniques, entity recognition and tracking, advanced audio capabilities and realistic robotic and haptic schemes. In addition, the vast quantities of data to be transferred efficiently would naturally require powerful, robust networking systems with high bandwidth and low latency, as well as a low jitter, or variation, of the latency. This concern over networking quality is one of the main focus areas for Internet2 and will be essential to the support of future technologies.

We've all had those harried days when we need to be in two places at one time, or when we have to travel for our

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