To get a better idea of what the TPT Room means to Telepresence Tech, Howard Lichtman, Publisher of Telepresence Options, sat down with the CEO of Telepresence Tech, Duffie White, and the co-owner of Regal Research and Manufacturing, Mike Powell.  The three discussed the development process behind the new TPT Room, emphasizing the benefits of having the in-house manufacturing capabilities of Regal behind the venture.  After initially partnering, Regal has now officially taken an equity stake in Telepresence Tech, according to Powell.  White added that tighter integration of design and manufacturing services will allow Telepresence Tech to accommodate volume sales of their full range of products, including the new TPT room.

See the 3-D TelePresence Room in Action

Watch the Complete Interview

Following the interview session, we were given a tour of the manufacturing facilities used to create the TPT room and other Telepresence Tech products.  These state-of-the-art facilities included a bevy of technological advances themselves, including the Trumpf TruPunch 5000 Punch.  This machine fully automates the entire process of turning sheet metal into finished product and it can even run "lights out" through the night without any human supervision. We were also shown the paint room, an automated welder (Panasonic PerformArc Robotic Welder), and a host of other machines, all humming along on various projects.

This last Friday, the Lab had the pleasure of being personally introduced to some of the good folks at Electrosonic Systems and their 2D/3D encoder the VN-Matrix. The VN is an unassuming little black box that claims to be one of the world's fastest encoder and decoders, with only a 35ms latency for encoding/decoding 2D images. Our firsthand look proved an interesting window into the world of bandwidth-intelligent high-resolution imaging technology.

From Left: Chris Nelson of Electrosonic, HSL and Karl Johnson in front of the Lab's VN_Matrix Test Bed.

Showing us the VN at the Lab were Karl Johnson, General Manager of Networked Imaging Products and Chris Nelson, Regional Business Manager - Mid Atlantic @ Electrosonic. To give you a bit of background on Electrosonic, the company specializes in large screen image processing, media networks and show control, and outsourced facilities management and equipment maintenance. These applications comes together in the form of large video walls for clients that range from Military Command and Control, Museum and Visitor Centers, Theme Park and Attractions all the way to the world of TV and Broadcasting.

The VN-Matrix product fits snugly into their lineup, allowing the company's video wall applications to replicate and render ultra-high resolution images across the globe. The box is capable of encoding and decoding detailed 2D imagery at the WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution or full HD video (1920x1200) with accompanying audio, all in real time. Some of the advantages the VN-Matrix claims over its competition are the way it handles errors. Using a proprietary codec, the VN is able to achieve 35ms latency through the box with limited pixel disruption that will not carry over into additional frames, like MPEG2 and H.264 encoding can do. The VN will also transmit the keyboard strokes and mouse gestures of the remote party across with the images they are sending, making this product a solution for the collaborative 2D space.

NOTE:  All images come from a Washington University Paper that discusses the effect of bit errors on compressed systems like the VNMatrix.  We have removed the MPEG4/H.264 error reproduction previously shown but Mr. Johnson would like to add that, "The effect of packet loss and bit errors on H.264 video streams is more severe than MPEG-2 because it has more efficient compression and a higher percentage of information represents I-frames.  When I-frame data is corrupted it has a more catastrophic effect on the visible results."

The obvious appeal of the VN to the world of telepresence is the machine's ability to stream complex 'pixel-perfect' 2D images across vast distances to accompany any telepresence deployment. Such precise distance image rendering may seem a touch excessive for routine office documents but between disparate engineering departments reliant on CAD drawings, the VN/telepresence combo could vastly improve intra-company collaboration. Some of the example applications shown to us include Boeing's collaboration on real-time CAD drawings, a BT global operations center, Lockheed flight simulators, and the ability for the military to share real-time targeting information over standard T1 lines.  But how did the device work in a real world environment?

We put the VNMatrix into the new HPL Test Bed to see how it worked. Our lab recently turned up a 4.5MBps / 3 T-1 line super-high QoS test network from visual collaboration Inter-networking provider MASERGY which runs alongside the Lab's existing Verizon FiOS connection. As part of the Lab's expansion program, we are looking to hire a test engineer to help professionalize out testing methodology. For this demonstration, Electrosonic provided us with a LAN network solution.

In the test bed, the VN-Matrix encoder/decoder system was tasked with transmitting a simulated satellite's global position relative to the earth across a wired gigabit Ethernet connection (setup in much the same way the above diagram illustrates minus the WAN). It worked very well with the crisp, pixel perfect images Electrosonic promised. We also witnessed the system successfully transmit a 720p HD video signal across the same platform with only an almost imperceptible lag between the two screens. Although the test was done on an in-house network, the remote display rendered by the VN was very impressive in both its quality and speed. We would have liked to simulate various network conditions for the VN, which wasn't an option on this go round, but we still believe the VN-Matrix is worthy of a look from anyone with high resolution imaging needs.

How did this start?

The beginnings of this transformation find their roots in the world of video games from the late 1970s and early 80s. Early attempts at creating alternate universes in a digital domain were called MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions). Essentially, a MUD creates a textual fantasy world where players assume hierarchical roles and attack one another. The famous Zork game of the 1980s was one of the first commercially successful MUDs. Not exactly physically immersive experiences, but, in creating these worlds from dreams of digital Dungeons and Dragons, these MUDs represent the first alternate digital universes where people could interact with 'each other' through avatars.

As graphical horsepower caught up to the imagination of the dork underground over the next 10 years, these text based worlds became Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Essentially based upon the same ideas as their MUD counterparts, MMORPGs turned the text-based fantasy worlds of MUDs into graphical wonderlands that actually showed the environment. Famous titles like Everquest and World of Warcraft reached millions, fueled by wider adoption of the internet as the 90s progressed.

Stepping into the Metaverse

Young lady in Second Life buying the skin for her avatar [via 2nd Look Gallery (Chip Midnight)]

Building on the success of MMORPGs and the second-generation, higher-speed internet, entire virtual 3D worlds worlds like Second Life have now sprung up. What separates these virtual worlds from their MMORPGs partners is that the user, not the producer of the title, defines the environment and the avatars (see image above). There is no real goal to achieve in this 'game'; in that sense this is a digital world of avatars interacting with each other just for the sake of doing so, creating a metaverse (The metaverse is a concept created in the cyberpunk epic Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - an incredible book you really need to read for both pleasure and to understand what is to come).

An image taken from Sony's virtual world for the PS3, Home [via kotaku.com]

Second Life is not alone in creating a virtual world. Perennial big dog on the block, Sony, is set to introduce their own virtual world called 'Home'. Home is still currently in development but beta testing has begun and the finished product should be ready for the Playstation 3 platform later in 2007. The beastly Cell processor that runs the PS3 gives Home best-in-class graphics (pictured above). Sony is combining social networking capabilities like sharing video and instant messages with their own virtual world to create something above what even Second Life is offering.

Connecting You to the Metaverse

Trying to help you direct your avatar through the metaverse is complicated with only a keyboard and mouse so a new company called Emotiv was formed to help fill the void. Their newest product, Project Epoc, uses an electro-encephalograph (EEG), pictured, to transmit neural data between the user and computer. It can transmit facial expressions, most user movements and even emotional states to help close the gap between the real world and virtual worlds, a use its founders specifically had in mind during the design process. Despite some criticisms of the technology, it has been shown to be functional. You can watch the system in action below:

Are you real?

As the technology to create an alternate world and use your brain to interact with it has now become reality, so has the technology to reverse the whole process and bring the first 'human avatars' - human reproductions of digital beings - into our reality. In March 2007, The University of Florida, Bradley University in Illinois and The University of Waterloo in Canada jointly held the first play to incorporate an actor who was seamlessly 'beamed' onto multiple sets around North America.

The main actor in the play, pictured above in Florida, had a computer on his person that was processing and sending his movements to both Canada and Illinois. His movements were being recreated at the other locations in real time as he performed them. With the aid of special lighting and 2D effects, all stages made it appear that both the real and avatar actors were there together on the same stage. Professor James Oliverio of the University of Florida College of Fine Arts appropriately added,

"We are now dealing with a 4D experience, where time is the fourth dimension. The innovation is that the virtual world is woven so tightly into the live, onstage physical performance that it forms a holistic whole for the audience."

John's Thoughts

A conceptual metaverse where humans take the form of digital avatars has actually come into reality alongside the technology to reproduce digital avatars back into reality. While both implementations are still crude, they exist and it lends us all a window into the future.

The first inklings of our digital world began from a military project that was simply trying to design a system that was able to cope with nodes failing and after 30 years was still only a disconnected basket of USENET groups, scientific listservs, and ISP portals. It was only after the system was opened to outside development that this patchwork was woven into a connected universe we now call the Internet. As Second Life opens their architecture to user-defined development and actively competes against other lesser-known virtual worlds like Kaneva and Sony's Home, these disconnected pieces will eventually coalesce into a metaverse, much like the internet did ten years prior.

Telepresence appears to be a vital 'gap' technology between our current internet and this evolving metaverse. Since the metaverse cannot yet produce a 3D avatar that could conduct a realistic meeting, telepresence essentially mimics this behavior over the internet by stuffing super high-end 2D video across tier-1 pipes. Once the network of telepresence studios is more fully built out on a worldwide level, the result will be nearly instantaneous communications with anyone, anywhere - much like Stephenson outlines in the metaverse of Snow Crash.

Cool graphic from David Armano

Together, this basket of revolutionary telecommunication technologies is transforming our world by undercutting the static, vertical hierarchies that were required to maintain order in a disconnected world. The shift to horizontally aligned organizations can be viewed as the ultimate disruptive technology of the 21 century. Everything from the destruction of the American manufacturing sector and the subsequent rise of Chinese economic power to the unfortunate success of asymmetrical terror-based warfare against vertical aligned armies underscores just how seismic this shift is.

Cyperpunk dystopias like Neuromancer, Blade Runner and Snow Crash represent one view of our hyper-connected future we should learn from in advance. The pace with which this technology is accelerating far outpaces our ability to predicts its ultimate impact on our lives. We have already seen what the instantaneous textual information of the internet has done. We are about to bear witness to what truly immersive instantaneous communication via telepresence can do and we are standing at the precipice of what true immersion into a metaverse will do. In the wrong hands, such technology could be used as a powerful weapon but we can still name-our-own-adventure because the game has just begun. Knowing that all this incredibly disruptive technology is coming makes it our responsibility to institute the proper safeguards that ensure those that come after can enjoy the same standard of living our freedoms provide us today.

Further Reading:

• Connecting your Brain to the Game by [via Technology Review]
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• Virtual Actors Take to the Stage by Jennifer Viegas [via Australian Broadcasting Company]

Basic holographic technology has been integrated into our daily lives for awhile now so it may not at first appear all that impressive. You are probably most familiar with the rainbow hologram, developed in 1968 by Dr. Stephen Benton. These are the type that appear on the back of your credit cards.

These type of holograms refract light that comes into them whereas the more advanced type of holograms you see actually display a 3D image in front of you. These much cooler type of holograms are explained by the hologram gurus at MIT (they also have a museum of holograms with images like the one below).

Essentially these more modern holograms use a series of cameras that recreate the image in front of you in 3-dimensions. Since most of these holograms are driven by lasers, their accessibility to the common people has been limited by price. However, the rise of CDs and DVDs has driven the price of solid state lasers to the floor, allowing for holograms to become a more mainstream application. An example of just such a application is when Musion and Toyota recently joined forces to create the most complex 3D hologram ever displayed [pictured below].

This builds off of earlier Toyota 3D display projects where a RAV4 was rendered in 3D using the ViZoo Cheoptics360 system.

In 2005, the Gorillaz performed as holograms with Madonna at the MTV Europe Awards in Lisbon, Portugal. You should really check this one out:

GE also recently introduced their new NX jet engine with an impressive holographic presentation:

At the recent FIFPRO XI Player Award Show, holographic soccer/football players were seen live on stage:

All of these videos highlight what is possible with the current technology available but there are even more opportunities than these waiting for holograms. As current storage densities on optical media like CDs, DVDs and BLURAY/HDDVD discs reach the physical limits of laser miniaturization, holograms appear to be one of the surest ways to increase storage densities and transfer speeds using a relatively similar disc technology.

The discs 'burn' information into holograms rather than just ones and zeros yet the entire hologramic storage bit is decoded as one unit, raising the productivity of the data fetch by leaps and bounds. Youc an learn more about this technology (Holographic Versatile Disc - HVD) here

John Analysis:

All of these holographic displays and storage mediums will continue to increase in usage due to lower prices and the need for more advanced 3D imaging techniques. Events like the GE product unveiling and FIFPRO show will continue to highlight what is possible. Over the course of 2007 and 2008 the Gorillaz plan to do an entire tour as holograms performers, a feat never attempted before. As BLURAY and HDDVD become mainstream, newer technology discussion will have to include holographic storage. Excitement awaits in this industry; stay tuned.

UPDATE:

Check out Cisco's use of on stage telepresence holograms

The catoms can be aligned to create any shape imaginable, in theory. In reality, the technology remains at a point where a smile is still a laughable proposition (my apologies to Phill Robb). Researchers are still hoping to create the first real life catoms but they have achieved some success in getting catom-like objects to 'wiggle' in a laboratory setting.

A wiggling catom (not so small just yet):

What the catoms will really do someday:

The two leaders of this project, Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein (associate professors of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University) laid out their vision with terminology that will strike a cord with frequent HPL readers - a 'telepresence'. They describe a telepresence as a 3D duplicated version of a person that would have the ability to replace traditional conferencing by placing all meeting participants in the same virtual environment.

The first realization of this idea has been in a fully virtual space - Second Life. A PR-plug by PR firm Text 100 explains the commercial benefits of this technology in this solid YouTube short:

The next milestone in this project is to create a 3D fax machine (.pdf link!). The limitless possibilities of the project have also attracted a bevy of public and private investment, namely that of the National Science Foundation, Computing Research Association, DARPA and tech-bellwether Intel.

For those of you who are a little lower on the nerd ladder than your friends at the lab, a holodeck is a fictitious virtual reality room from the world of Star Trek where re-programmable matter, aligned by tractor beams and force fields, takes on the look of the real world when overlaid by holographic images. Taking this a step 'closer' to reality, the Star Trek Encyclopedia II states that "holodeck matter is a partially stable form of matter, created by transporter-based replicators, for use in holographic simulations." To see the most interactive holodeck in 'existence', check out the one that has been built in Second Life (where the present limitations of catom tech are not so apparent):

In essence, the holodeck is the realization of catom technology or, at the very least, the general direction such a technology is advancing towards.

John's Analysis:

How do catoms, programmable matter, the holodeck we all want to try out and telepresence relate to each other (not a bad question, honestly)? Catoms fall somewhere in the chasm between the of fantasy Star Trek/Second Life and the reality of modern telepresence solutions. The birth of commercial telepresence came out of a need for more effective visual collaboration without the burdens of actually having to travel the physical distance. The natural evolution of real-world collaboration technologies further moves our world towards the still fictitious collaborative ideas presented by the holodecks in Star Trek and Second Life.

Once you move beyond the fantasy of Star Trek 70s-80s-era's tractor beams, you will see the 21st century catom is essentially the foundation of the mythical holodeck. This logically places the research by Mowry and Goldstein into the feasability of catoms and programmable matter as the first step in making taking this science fiction fantasy into reality. As these interactive collaboration technologies like catoms, multi-layer LCDs and 3D images without holograms fall to realistic price points, they will get integrated into 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation telepresence environments not as odd science fiction fantasies but rather as business necessities.

For more information on this project and the technology associated with it, check out these sites:

• Claytronics Synthetic Reality Project at Carnegie Mellon
• 3D You by Chad Vander Veen (govtech.net)
• Second Life vs Holodecks
• 'Programmable matter' one day could transform itself into all kinds of look-alikes

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 20 -- Telanetix, Inc. (TNXI), a leading developer of Telepresence technology, announced today its plans to offer a new interoperable digital presence platform by the end of the first quarter of 2007. The new platform will give Telanetix users the option to participate in Telepresence meetings with standard H.263 and H.264 SIP enabled video conferencing systems currently being offered by video conferencing providers such as Polycom, Inc. and Tandberg.

"The Telepresence market currently has a large number of organizations that are using a mixed suite of conferencing products and services," stated Rick Ono, Telanetix Chief Operating Officer. "In an effort to offer our users the most advanced digital presence solution, Telanetix has created one of the first truly interoperable platforms for Telepresence. As video conferencing continues to become a mainstream application for businesses, our powerful solution offers all the benefits of Telepresence without requiring our customers to abandon existing systems. Our interoperability platform shifts the market in a new direction and will have significant impact on the Telepresence industry for years to come."

The interoperable platform will be offered as an option to Telanetix's popular Digital Presence System. The platform is a combination of hardware and software components that facilitate seamless connectivity directly with the core of the Telanetix System.

"There are several methods that we could have used to accomplish interoperability," said Rob Arnold, CTO of Telanetix, Inc. "While we have always supported room interoperability through integration of existing legacy systems, we found many people were looking for a more elegant solution. Based on that feedback from our customers and potential customers, we opted for a fully integrated solution that does not involve the use of a third party system, which enables us to ensure the installation, management and maintenance of our system remains seamless and
hassle free."

The interoperable platform will be available on all Telanetix Digital Presence products. Existing installations are easily field upgradeable.

About Telanetix, Inc.
Telanetix, Inc. has developed a unique technology which creates a fully immersive and interactive environment that integrates audio, video, and data from multiple locations into a single environment regardless of geographic boundaries. The company's Digital Presence Technology delivers full size, face-to-face images of real-time video, audio, and data in high quality resolution at 30 frames per second which is so profoundly real that users feel as if they are all present in the same room. Using Telanetix developed Codecs and advanced MPEG-4 compression on a Linux platform, the Company has effectively replaced the central videoconferencing bridge of legacy systems with high quality decentralized IP multicasting which provides speed and resolution which is significantly greater than those found in most existing technologies.

Additional information is available at the Telanetix Corporate website at http://www.telanetix.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable federal securities laws, including, without limitation, anything relating or referring to future financial results and plans for future business development activities, and are thus prospective. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties some of which cannot be predicted or quantified based on current expectations. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the risks and uncertainties set forth from time to time
in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Consequently, future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by, or underlying the forward-looking statements contained herein. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly release statements made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.

Contacts:

Company:
Rick Ono
Telanetix, Inc.
(858) 362-2250
rick@telanetix.com

Investor Relations:
Terry McGovern
Vision Advisors, Inc.
(415) 902-3001
mcgovern@visionadvisors.net

Warren Dexter
SFC, Inc.
(503) 722-7300
jeff@sfcinc.com

Media:
Todd Barrish
Dukas Public Relations
(212) 704-7385
todd@dukaspr.com

Via [PRNewswire]

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