Watch Ed Ulbrich talk about the technology behind it.

Armchair travellers wearing the device will be able to hear the roar of lions on safari, smell the flowers of an Alpine meadow or feel the heat of the Caribbean sun on their face - all from the comfort of their sitting room.

The device will also allow people to greet friends and family on the other side of the world as if they were in same room, and to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds.

It will even allow students to explore history - and find out what it was really like to live in Ancient Egypt, Rome or Greece.

Scientists have been developing virtual reality devices for nearly two decades. But until now, most have only been able to recreate sound and vision.

Now a team of British academics from York and Warwick universities have launched a project to create the first authentic VR helmet - a device that stimulates the senses so convincingly  they have called in Real Virtuality.

The Virtual Cocoon will consist of a headset packed with specially developed electronics - including a high definition, high dynamic computer screen, state of the art speakers, fans to blow hot and cold air over the wearer’s face and a ’smell tube’ which releases chemicals under the nose to mimic real life odours.

Prof Alan Chalmers of Warwick said the headset should be complete in three to five years. He believes it will be used in long distance business meetings, in schools to allow students to revisit history, or by families wanting to get a taste of far-flung destinations.

It will also be popular among computer games enthusiasts - particularly those who enjoy virtual role play games such as Second Life.

‘The idea is not to replace reality but to complement it,’ he said at an event organised by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. ‘You can get a taster of reality in a safe and controlled way.’

The prototype helmet connects wirelessly to a computer which feeds it information about a virtual world or a another part of the real world.

It features a high dynamic screen - which uses a combination of LED and LCD technology to produce pictures that are 10 times darker, or 30 times brighter, than conventional television.

A tube connected to a box of chemicals will release smells under the wearer’s nose, while a similar device can squirt flavours directly into the mouth.

The heat and humidity can be changed using a fan and heater, while surround sound speakers recreate noise.

Prof Chalmers believes owners will be able to buy computer software that allows them to explore virtual worlds.

It should be possible too to explore other parts of the world in real time.

A recording device attached to a car could record the sights, smells, sounds and feel of a safari and transmit the sensations over the internet to a Virtual Cocoon on the other side of the world.

Professor David Howard of the University of York, lead scientist on the initiative, says: ‘Virtual Reality projects have typically only focused on one or two of the five senses – usually sight and hearing. We’re not aware of any other research group anywhere else in the world doing what we plan to do.

‘Smell will be generated electronically via a new technique being pioneered by Alan Chalmers and his team at Warwick which will deliver a predetermined smell recipe on-demand.

‘Taste and smell are closely linked but we intend to provide a texture sensation relating to something being in the mouth. Tactile devices will provide touch.’

The helmet could also be used in training soldiers, police officers, medics or fire fighters.

Designers are currently working on a price for the device which initial estimates place at around £1,500.

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OPINION

Do we really want to simulate ALL 5 senses? Do we really need to taste or smell the virtual fart your little brother emails you as a joke? Sure, its a romantic idea to have virtual smells of a simulated flowery meadow or the taste of an authentic home-cooked Italian pizza, but personally I would not want chemicals being sprayed in my mouth!! And I’m sick of articles referring to Second Life as the epitome of a virtual existence. Puh-lease!

iCub is capable of human style eye, head and leg movement as well as basic object recognition and a realistic hand grasping movement.

The mini humanoid robot has been modelled on a three-and-a-half-year-old child and is the result of a five-year £7.5m project is to develop a fully functioning child-like robot.

“Scientists want to give it the ability to crawl on all fours and sit up, to handle objects with precision and to have head and eye movements that echo those of humans,” reports PA News.

Open source robotic development

For more details you can head over to the RobotCub website, which details the background to the project and is the “home of the iCub”

“Our main goal is to study cognition through the implementation of a humanoid robot the size of a 3.5 year old child: the iCub,” reads the site’s blurb.

“This is an open project in many different ways: we distribute the platform openly, we develop software open-source, and we are open to including new partners and form collaboration worldwide.

The iCub made its first trip to the UK this week to attend the University of Manchester at the Symposium on Humanoid Robotics.

iCub crosses academic disciplines

Professor John Gray, visiting professor in the Control Systems Centre at the University of Manchester, noted that it was, “a tremendous coup to have the iCub here in Manchester - this is the first time it has been seen publicly in the UK.

“One of the great things about the iCub is it is an open systems platform. Users and developers in all disciplines, from psychology, through to cognitive neuroscience, to developmental robotics, can use it and customise it freely.

“It is intended to become a research platform of choice, so that people can exploit it quickly and easily, share results, and benefit from the work of other users. This will lead to significantly greater community-wide progress in embodied cognition research.”

“It’s hoped the iCub will develop its cognitive capabilities in the same way as a child, progressively learning about its own bodily skills, how to interact with the world and eventually how to communicate with other individuals.”

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In a panel discussion on 3-D distribution, National Assn. of Theater Owners prexy John Fithian said that 3-D is “the value add” that theater owners have been looking for to spur their transition to digital projection. “This is the technology of the future, and it’s going to be here for a long time,” Fithian said.

Theater owners are demanding more 3-D product, he said, and credited the studios with holding up their end with a generous slate of 3-D titles in 2009.

DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg, a consistent evangelist for 3-D, kicked off the event with a morning keynote and conversation with event organizer Bob Dowling. Katzenberg said no innovation in decades has had greater possibilities for enhancing movies.

The format “offers a premium experience and has the consumer paying a premium price,” said Katzenberg, adding that he expects DreamWorks Animation to charge a $5 premium for 3-D on its releases, beginning with “Monsters vs. Aliens” in 2009.

He acknowledged that “just at the moment exhibition and distribution got together” on 3-D, “there’s no money.”

But he said the incremental cost of going stereoscopic on a $150 million DWA feature is about $15 million, and the 2,500 3-D screens he expects to be available when the movie comes out are “more than enough to recover our cost.”

Though all panelists expressed their enthusiasm for stereo, the hardest evidence for the format came in a presentation by Screen Digest analyst Charlotte Jones, who presented the business case for 3-D.

“Premium pricing is the heart of a new incremental revenue stream for movie theaters,” Jones said.

She noted that 3-D screens are generating twice the attendance of 2-D screens and three times the revenue, and that ratio has been holding steady despite the growing number of 3-D screens.

“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” the highest-grossing 3-D film to date, generated more than half its grosses from the 30% of screens that showed the movie in 3-D, said Jones.

Films in the 3-D format also play longer, she said, so overall that means theater owners can recoup their investment in 3-D systems with just three to four releases. But she warned that the shift to 3-D would exacerbate the trend toward fewer studio pics with higher budgets.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Group prexy Mark Zoradi, in previewing Disney’s extensive 3-D slate, said 40% of the gross on “Bolt” to date came from 3-D screens and that on “Bolt,” “Meet The Robinsons” and “Chicken Little” combined, 3-D screens outperformed 2-D 2 1/2 to 1.

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“Faith’s world in Mirror’s Edge is visceral, immediate, and very dangerous; it is imperative that the gameplay reflect this level of urgency,” said Owen O’Brien, Senior Producer at DICE. “NVIDIA PhysX technology affords us the ability to bring a totally new level of immersion to the game, and by doing so, gamers can truly become part of the world.”

With the NVIDIA PhysX physics engine, the world of Mirror’s Edge comes to life with real affects of wind, weapons impact, and in-game movements. Every-day objects within the game become part of the overall experience. Cloth, flags, and banners can now impact weapons and players; ground fog interacts with the player’s footsteps; explosions fill the air with smoke and debris; and weapon impacts are enhanced with interactive particles.

On the PC, PhysX technology harnesses the power of CUDA, NVIDIA’s general-purpose, parallel-computing architecture, to handle 10-20 times more visual complexity than what’s possible without a GeForce CUDA-enabled GPU. And unlike competitors’ solutions, which do not offer hardware-scaling capabilities, only PhysX technology leverages the best of both CPU and GPU architectures to deliver the ultimate, immersive, user experience. With over 100 million CUDA-compatible GeForce 8 Series and higher GPUs shipped to date, PhysX technology has the largest installed base of general-purpose, parallel-computing processors to run on.

“If you love intense combat scenes, fast-paced chases, and sky-high adventures then Mirror’s Edge is the game for you,” said Ujesh Desai, vice president of GeForce desktop business at NVIDIA. “Gamers will appreciate the greater freedom of movement, including sliding under barriers, tumbling, wall-running, and shimmying across ledges—all within an environment that is dynamic and immersive, delivered in part by our PhysX technology”.

Consisting of a robust physics engine, API, and middleware software, NVIDIA PhysX technology is interactive entertainment’s most pervasive physics engine and is already included in more than 140 shipping titles for PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360 computer and video game system from Microsoft, Wii, and the PC.

About Mirror’s Edge
Mirror’s Edge was awarded “Best Xbox 360 Game” at the GC Developers Conference in Leipzig, Germany. It also received the Game Critics Award for “Best Original Game” at E3 in July. Mirror’s Edge shipped to retail stores worldwide on November 11th for the PLAYSTATION3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system. The PC version of Mirror’s Edge will ship in January 2009 to retailers worldwide. For more information about the game, please visit www.mirrorsedge.com.

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Well, you’d be wrong on both counts. Not only does the interface of the future exist, but after several years of development, it’s entering commercial form. Sure, you’ll probably never live to see it put to use in local law enforcement - even the FBI has famously outdated computers - but someday, the local fuzz might get their hands on G-speak: a “spatial operating environment.”

If there are similarities between G-speak and the Minority Report computer, it’s because one of the film’s science advisors, John Underkoffler, is the founder of Oblong Industries, the company that has developed it. Spatial operating environments, or SOEs, as Oblong calls them, are essentially a combination of gesture-based input, “recombinant” networking, and a litany of real-world heads-up displays. It’s not just a fancy skin, either, but an entire platform for application development and execution. Oblong has partners that develop apps for G-speak, but the company also does custom development in-house.

Oblong says that G-speak, which is an outgrowth of the founders’ work at MIT in the 1990s, is particularly well-suited for working with data-intensive applications and multimedia, two areas of computing that benefit greatly from 3-D manipulation. The platform also allows multiple displays and CPUs to be stitched together to create what it calls a “building-scale” computing environment - essentially entire rooms with 3-D interfaces that allow multiple users to collaborate on large data sets and bodies of media.

To operate it, you need a pair of Tom Cruise’s fancy computer gloves. Wearing them, as you’ll see if you check out the video, allows free-hand gestural input that can include pointing, grabbing, and several other hand poses from several pairs of hands simultaneously. As their website describes, “Every graphical and input object in a g-speak environment has real-world spatial identity and position. Anything on-screen can be manipulated directly. For a g-speak user, ‘pointing’ is literal.”

Eye-catching software platforms like G-speak might be a clue to what interfaces will look like in the next few decades, but what about the computing guts of the future? As of this week, two companies - IBM and Cray - are duking it out to claim the title of world’s fastest supercomputer.

Just days ago, Cray claimed its “Jaguar XT5” machine was world’s fastest, running at a mind-bending speed of 1.059 petaflops thanks to its 45,000 quad-core AMD Operton processors. But IBM’s contender, named Roadrunner, hits 1.105 petaflops, according to Top500, which released its rankings on Friday. Roadrunner lives in Los Alamos National Laboratory, and runs on a melange of 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell Broadband Engine chips, as well as another 6,948 AMD Opteron Dual-Core processors for good measure. Jaguar is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

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“Most 3D operates on a single basic principle—tricking our dumb, binocular brain into interpreting a 2D image into one with depth. The most basic way to do this is stereoscopy, which is essentially showing a slightly different image to each eye which the brain mashes together into a 3D image. We’ve broken up the million different ways to do 3D in a few broad categories.”

But before you read their article, check this out. Not “real 3D”, but Augmented Reality.

OK, check out Gizmodo

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Based on your comments, lag was the major concern; this is just a matter of optimization and rest assured that we’re providing our programmers with all the pizza and beer… err… pop they need to continue improving it.

The live-action 3-D sci-fi adventure from James Cameron will be released simultaneously in Imax 3-D when the film premieres next year in conventional 3-D theaters, Imax Corp. and 20th Century Fox announced Thursday.

Set for a Dec. 18, 2009 release, “Avatar” is Cameron’s sci-fi epic, made in stereoscopic 3-D and combining live-action and computer animation using visionary new techniques.

The film will be digitally re-mastered for the Imax release.

“Our goal with Avatar is to revolutionize live-action 3-D movie-making, and I have no doubt that it will look and sound incredible in Imax 3-D,” Cameron said. “The larger field of view and power surround sound of an Imax theater will completely immerse the audience in a way that cannot be experienced anywhere else.”

Added Imax’s Bruce Snyder, president of domestic distribution, “The Imax theater network is increasingly becoming an important part of our distribution strategy, as it continues to expand with its new digital projection system.”

“Avatar” centers on an ex-Marine who finds himself in the middle of hostilities on an alien planet filled with exotic life forms.

As an Avatar — a human mind in an alien body — he finds himself torn between two worlds, fighting for his own survival and that of the indigenous people.

The film stars Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver.

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“They were quite sophisticated, no doubt,” said Hans Jürgen Kreuzer, a professor of theoretical physics at Dalhousie University and an expert on holography who watched the 3-D interviews. “But I immediately said to my wife that I don’t think it has anything to do with holograms.”

At about 7 p.m. ET, reporter Jessica Yellin, who was in Chicago, spoke with New York-based anchor Wolf Blitzer live “via hologram,” CNN said.

Yellin appeared somewhat fuzzy and her image, apparently projected a few feet in front of Blitzer, appeared to glow around the edges. “You’re a terrific hologram,” Blitzer said to her.

“It’s like I follow the tradition of Princess Leia,” she said, referring to the Star Wars character.

Yellin explained that her image was being filmed in Chicago by 35 high-definition cameras set in a ring inside a special tent, which were processed and synchronized by 20 computers to the cameras in the New York studio.

The network, which made use of three-dimensional imaging technology produced by Norway-based Vizrt and Israel-based SportVu, billed the interview as a first for television. CNN also aired a second “hologram” interview between anchor Anderson Cooper and rapper Will.I.Am, who was also in Chicago.

The CNN anchors were not really speaking to three-dimensional projected images, but rather empty space, Kreuzer said. The images were simply added to what viewers saw on their screens at home, in much the same way computer-generated special effects are added to movies.

Kreuzer said the images were tomograms, which are images that are captured from all sides, reconstructed by computers, then displayed on screen.

Holograms, on the other hand, are projected into space.

CNN officials could not be reached for comment.

Kreuzer said technology is not far from being able to produce what CNN had tried to do, although capturing and projecting holograms of big objects like people is still a ways off.

Holographic images are generally captured and projected using coherent light such as lasers. A laser would need to be more than six feet in diameter to capture a person’s image, which Kreuzer said is impossible because such a light would be blinding.

It may soon be possible to capture and project large objects using other sources of coherent light, such as light-emitting diodes. LEDs are considerably cheaper and safer than lasers, Kreuzer said.

“There will be some rapid development now because of the cheapness of these LEDs,” he said. “You can use a thousand if you want.”

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