From: awm@vrnet.washington.edu (Andy MacDonald) Subject: Re: INDUSTRY: NASA develops "telepresence" for exploration (Forwarded) Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1992 08:39:38 GMT Organization: Human Interface Technology Lab In article daver@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu (David Ray) writes: >>NASA DEVELOPS "TELEPRESENCE" FOR EXPLORATION >> (stuff deleted..) >> (stuff about how NASA is doing telepresense) > > I have dreamed of this kind of technology for a long time, and it >sounds wonderful, but I can't understand one thing. There is such >a long delay for radio waves (or any e/m waves) to get to the moon or >Mars that I can't see how there could be any useful "feedback". >It takes over 2 seconds to the moon and back, and over 15 minutes >to Mars and back. How can a person wearing a headset be able to >steer a vehicle, or "feel" an object's texture with such a long >delay? > >Just wondering. > >Dave The NASA press release mentioned the astronauts would work from basecamp, which I assume is ON Mars, not on Earth. I read a science fiction short story once that had a telepresence-controlled video camera-helecraft in it; the camera caused an accident because of the delay (about half a second) in control. The camera swayed, the operator compensated, but by the time the camera got the signal it has swayed back the other way, and, well, you can see what happened. More than a second or so of delay would be intolerable. While the subject is around, it might be interesting to point out that telepresence always seems to be associated with scientific applications. People want to explore Mars and the bottom of the ocean, operate safely in fires and nuclear reactors, change scale to move atoms or boulders. I, on the other hand, believe what may potentially be the biggest market (after these systems become relatively cheap, maybe car-priced) is televacationing. One application for VR is taking people places they would not ordinarily be able to go. Unfortunately, VR's synthetic images are not real enough to duplicate Mount Fuji or the Mona Lisa, and even if they were, there still would not be the knowledge that you had seen the real articles. But by using telepresence technology, tourist could "see" Paris without leaving home. Rent-a-robot companies could set up stables of Telepresence Units (TPUs) in major cities and at major tourist sites. When you want to visit the Smithsonian, you go to the local branch office of the company, get into a booth, run your credit card and punch up the code number for your destination. A TPU from the appropriate stable would be assigned to you, and you could tour around, coming home when you are bored. You could even wander around outside, and get a much better feel for a city than you would from disjointed, edited video. If these units cost no more than a car, the cost to rent one should be managable; perhaps the units would be more costly to operate after communications hookups, and they might have little resale value, but renting one would certainly be cheaper than flying around the world and staying in some expensive hotel with overpriced food. Would people take these "vacations?" Quite possibly they would; what do you think? [This article Copyright (C) 1992 Andrew MacDonald, so that when Hertz Rent-a-robot makes big bucks, I get some of it. Enormous :-D ] Andy MacDonald Human Interface Technology Lab awm@hitl.washington.edu