M.Tele. – A Telepresence framework for Mobile Phones
Description :
Telepresence is the use of virtual reality technology, especially for remote control of machinery and apparent participation in distant events. It is used for establishing a sense of presence or a shared space among geographically separated members of a group. And this is considered as an approach for projecting the human sensory apparatus into a remote location. Our telepresence framework is specially designed for mobile phones. So this eliminates the problem of carrying a laptop or requiring of workstation which is a must in most telepresence frameworks. This is a tremendous improvement in portability of telepresence. Here we have also addressed the multi-user collaborative operations. Several expertise with different technical backgrounds can work together to accomplish a single task, it doesn’t matter where they physically presence. Switching of the camera view is another improvement in our framework in order to improve the virtual realism. The operator is not restricted to a single directional view. Instead operator has the multiple directional view of the operation. Operator can switch to a different directional view with a single button press. We have measured that this has tremendously improved the user performance and accuracy of decision making. Currently we support any number of wired or wireless cameras to be used. Cameras can placed in the operation environment or can attach to the operation it self. In most application domain ineffective communication occurs because of inappropriate and ineffective presentation of information. With using the multi modal interface we can redundant and time share the information to help user to make decisions effectively. The Multi-modal interface we have used here is mobile phone display and tactile vibration which is sense to the human as visual and tactile sensory feedback. When the robot is collided with an obstacle in the operation environment, operator is updated with the multi-modal information. This means operator can see the visual information of collision by looking at mobile phone display and can feel it through tactile vibration. This improves virtual realism of telepresence. Here it is important to mention that while the visual information is displayed it won’t disturb to the video. User won’t see any delay or breaking in current video frame. Frame processing is another prominent feature what we have used to improve the accuracy of operators decision making. Each and every video frame is passing through a processing module which outputs a processed frame. The operator can dynamically change the processing technique by using the mobile phone interface. The selection of the processing technique more likely based on the operation currently he performs on. For an example if it a path following operation the operator can select an edge detection technique which helps him to tracking the path more effectively. We have measured that this video augmentation technique can successfully used to overcome the constraints exist with mobile phones such as limited size display.
What we deliver?
Our application is suitable for many industries. Basically it can use to take control of following two situations 1. Participate with distant operation In day to day life we meet some operations which are not suitable to assign a human operator to perform but have to be operated by a human. This may be due to vulnerability, accuracy, and distance etc… issues. Desktop or workstation based telepresence frameworks are very commonly implemented for this kind of operations. But with our mobile telepresence framework no need to restrict to desktop or workstation. It is just a mobile phone where the operator requiries to collaborate in the operation. 2. Distant Monitoring When ever the user needs to monitor some place or a operation or a thing continously, our telepresence framework is the better chice over desktop or workstation based solution. Because over dektop or workstation it is a very portable solution.
Why is the project unique?
Yes, Due to the popularity of telepresence, a huge amount of research has been devoted towards the development of novel telepresence frameworks. Most of these frameworks are standalone non portable frameworks where supports only for communications and do not focused on multi-user collaborative works with telepresence. We present a telepresence framework for mobile phones with multiuser participation of collaborative work. We have implemented robots based structure to represent a distant event which all the participants work together to accomplish a single goal.
Contact
S.B.M.C. Deshan
Western Sri Lanka
