Microtelepresence

siggraph 2000

Siggraph Unplugged
by Janet McConnaughy
The Associated Press
New Orleans, July 31, 2000

"At the other end of the size and reality scales is a gizmo that lets you see what bugs would look like if you were bug-sized. A stereo microscope looks into a box of live bugs, feeding video to stereo goggles.

Caterpillars become too big to see all at once. The fuzz on a red and black wingless wasp looks deep enough to sink your hands into.

Pull a trigger while moving your head, and the stage on which the Plexiglas box is mounted moves to let you follow specific bugs. Many skitter around too fast to keep up with. Were building another, lighter, stage. This ones moving five pounds of metal, said Tom Malzbender, manager of the visual computing department at HP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif."

View a microtelepresence demonstration (6.85MB). For additional demonstrations, go to mmsl demonstrations page.

Microtelepresence applies telepresence to the microscopic world. A stereoscopic head-mounted display immerses users in a remote microscopic world. Although the enviroment is only a few inches square, via microtelepresence, it appears to be about the size of an auditorium. The space is populated with various species of live insects. Relative head movements of the user are sensed with inertial-tracking hardware and control navigation within the microenvironment.

This is accomplished with a three-degree-of-freedom motion stage (basically a converted numerically controlled mill) adapted to a high-quality video microscope. For optimum depth perception, the microscope and display hardware are both stereoscopic.