BiReality

Physical travel can be expensive and time consuming. The goal of the Mutually-immersive Mobile Telepresence (BiReality) project is to provide a compelling, as well as economically advantageous, alternative experience to physical travel. This experience should be compelling for both the remote person as well as the people he or she is visiting: i.e., both mutually-immersive as well as allowing for mobility.

Mutually-immersive Mobile Telepresence uses a teleoperated robotic surrogate to visit remote locations as a substitute for physical travel. Our goal is to recreate to the greatest extent practical, both for the user and the people at the remote location, the sensory experience relevant for business interactions of the user actually being in the remote location. The system includes multi-channel bidirectional video and audio on a mobile surrogate, and preserves the gaze of the user and the remote participants so they can make eye contact. The multi-channel audio allows the user to utilize the "cocktail party effect" as well as control the direction their voice is projected at the remote location, enabling the user to selectively attend to and participate in multiple parallel remote conversations. Our second-generation system provides 360-degree surround video for both the user and remote participants, and the model 2 surrogate automatically preserves the height and sitting/standing posture of the user.

» BiReality demonstrations
» BiReality publications