Augmenting Telepresence System With HMD

Post by **brantlew** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 2:32 pm

This is moved over from another thread that was straying off topic...
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 5&start=15

I am currently examining the possibility of augmenting a telepresence robot with a head-tracking HMD. The current system just uses simple screen-to-screen video conferencing between two people. You can see the current system in action here.
http://teledev.blogspot.com/2011/07/diy ... art-1.html

I am considering an extension to this simple design whereby the operator would wear a "sunglasses" style HMD (probably Vuzix) to view the video, utilize a head-tracking system to control the robot camera motions, and a head mounted webcam contraption aimed at the controllers face to capture video. So the controllers face would always remain at a constant distance and angle on the robot's screen and the screen would swivel around mimicking the controller's head.

Some questions that I have are - what would be the best HMD to use. Currently I am considering the Vuzix 920VR for these reasons:
- The form factor is presentable to other viewers. It basically looks like ugly sunglasses.
- It is cheap (around $400 these days and maybe cheaper once the 1200 gets going)
- My resolution requirements are actually pretty low because the limiting factor is Internet video streaming bandwidth so the resolution and aspect ration seem acceptable to me.
- It has a built in head tracking system

What other HMD + head tracking solutions should I consider?

Other questions that have been raised or more subjective. Does adding an HMD actually improve a telepresence system? I think that as long as the system is responsive enough (low video lag, fast tracking camera motors, etc) then there is no doubt that the "controllers" experience will be improved. In other words the controller's perception of being present in a remote location will be enhanced. However, will the loss of eye contact and body motions diminish the communication for users on the other side and by how much? It seems to me that if the system were perfect - the robot head accurately tracked the controllers head in real time then the robot itself would come to exhibit a type of body language and would appear from the other side to be truly "inhabited" by a person. This is all wild speculation at this point but it's an interesting experiment that I am willing to try.

Any thoughts? Am I full of it?

Post by **cybereality** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:32 pm

I think the main issue with using an HMD for telepresence is that the people on the other side can't really see the controllers face or make eye-contact. In addition, most cheap HMDs (like what Vuzix sells) are not very immersive and are probably no better than using a regular monitor. I think what would be really cool is if the controller had an auto-stereoscopic 3D screen and the robot had a 3D camera (or just 2 standard webcams properly mounted). This would give the user more of the experience of being in the room with the other people. And it would avoid the need to have anyone wear glasses. There are already glasses-free 3D laptops available, and I have even created a DIY solution using parallax barriers for pretty cheap ( http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 961#p55961" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ). Having the robot also have a glasses-free 3D screen might be too difficult because of unknown/variable locations of people, or difficulty accommodating multiple viewers. Something to think about.

Post by **brantlew** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:50 pm

I think your skepticism is well founded Cyber. I am quite skeptical too, but not exactly for the same reasons. For one it seems that the Vuzix glasses cover the face no more than a regular pair of sunglasses. While that does eliminate eye contact, I'm not sure that that alone is enough to break the intimacy of a face-to-face conversation - if nothing else than for the fact that people seem perfectly capable of holding meaningful conversations with one another while wearing actual sunglasses. And yes, the Vuzix FOV provides nowhere near total-immersion but it is at least as good as staring into a laptop screen but with the added bonus of head tracking which surely at least doubles the sensation of presence.

So conceptually at least I think it could work. The problems I mostly foresee are of a technical nature. From the controller side: transmission delays, bandwidth limits, video compression, low resolution, motor speed and movement limitations would all work against the illusion of inhabiting the robot. At best it would probably feel very limiting and at worst it could be completely incomprehensible.

From the viewer's perspective it might feel very awkward always staring into a closeup of someone's face and there might be a sense of vertigo as the camera rotated along with the person's head and the world behind them spun. Also without really responsive motors and full rotational range the robot head motions might not convey anything and just look gimmicky.

So this whole concept is really high-risk because it could require a great deal of effort with a small chance of success but many, many ways that it could just flat-out fail spectacularly. Which is why I am proceeding cautiously and haven't put any money into it.

The auto-stereoscopic monitor is a good idea and one that I have considered. Basically you're attempting to create a realistic "window". It's seems relatively straight forward. Another similar but simpler concept that I have considered is implementing a fake 3D window from an extra large 2D image with just a head tracker and a viewport shifting app like in this demo (watch the football stadium demo at the end).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
It seems to do a really good job of simulating a window. It's debatable how much these "window" approaches would actually enhance the experience however over just regular 2D.

It's good to hear from people that have a lot of experience with these things. I appreciate your input a lot.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 11:49 pm

If you use two cameras on the robot side to give you a stereoscopic view, then I think telepresence could be enhanced quite significantly.
However, you will run into trouble with the head tracker, as most are not very good, and its rather annoying having to reset them all the time... you will probably need to upgrade this to one of the new breed which are supposed to be much better.

Post by **brantlew** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:17 am

I've never used a head tracker so explain what "not very good" means. Keep in mind that I will be writing software to directly hook into the API to translate directionality into robotic motions. So I will most certainly be applying filters to "smooth" out the motions. I don't want to transmit a bunch of jittery random fluctuations over to the robot. So motion noise is not a terrible problem unless its just all over the map. Are they that bad where you can't even smooth the motion and get a reasonably stable signal? Also small delays are not a problem either. I'm not shooting bad guys here - just trying to provide a control mechanism. I want to make sure to only capture directed and "purposeful" motions. A half second or second delay I think even would be workable. Are delays within that range?

Post by **WiredEarp** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:06 am

The bigger the delay, the more immersion will suffer.
The problem with most gyro based head trackers is that they suffer drift. IE, you look up, then down, then up, but you are now looking at a different point than before. Over time, this means you are now looking straight ahead, but the camera or sim is looking to the right or left etc. No matter what you code, you are going to go up against this issue (its the reason i'm looking at using Hydra, or will continue to use optical tracking).

Optical doesn't suffer these problems, but cheap optical tracking only works for a fixed location usually. Hybrid head trackers are also out nowadays that recalibrate using a compass or similar, these are supposed to be better. I have no experience with them tho.

Post by **cybereality** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:32 pm

The new Vuzix Wrap 6TC headtracker it actually pretty good. It does not suffer from the issues of the older models with the massive jitter and cross-talk. I did not notice really much drift either, I think they automatically compensate for this. Still have to check out the SDK to be sure, but so far it looks pretty smooth.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:56 pm

Apparently its a magnetic hybrid ('9' DOF). So I expect it will recalibrate once you keep your head still for a bit.

CyberReality, How is it if you look around or up and down very slowly? does it still track, or does it hang up?

Post by **brantlew** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 8:01 pm

WiredEarp - ok thanks, I understand now. Drift would be a problem. Optical does seem like a viable technology for me.

CyBer - is the 920VR tracker problematic? Is that tracker the same one that they include with the 1200VR or is the new one much improved.

Post by **cybereality** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 8:50 pm

@WiredEarp: I will have to test that in a moment (need to reboot the PC). But I didn't notice any issues, other then the fact to extreme angles would make it get confused (ie straight up or straight down). The speed of movement did appear to be a problem.

@brantlew: The 920VR uses the same tracker as the 1200VR (its called 6TC). The old tracker was on the VR920 (not to be confused with the 920VR). And the one on the VR920 was crap.

Post by **brantlew** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:43 pm

ok - so can anyone give me a reason NOT to choose the the Vuzix 920VR. I'm essentially just going to be using this HMD for full screen Skype calls which have a max resolution of 640x480. I "might" use it for a little light gaming or sim, but I think I'm the only non-gamer on this entire site. (I probably have not put more than 5 hours into a video game since Quake III) Its outward appearance is decent. The integrated head tracker is pretty good from what I understand. Full immersion would be nice, but it doesn't sound like any reasonably priced HMD's even comes close. FOV 35 versus 45 sounds like splitting hairs to me since the immersion doesn't seem to kick-in until something like 90+. And I can get it for $400 bucks.

I've gone back and forth on the 1200VR, but it sounds like it is only marginally better and in an aspect I don't really need - resolution. In fact it sounds like the lenses and fit are a step backward from the 920 or have I misinterpreted the early reviews? What are the compelling reasons to spend the extra $100-$200 on a 1200VR instead of the 920VR?

Everybody seems all hyped about the Sony HMD, but it sounds all wrong for this particular application.

Is there anything I am missing?

Post by **WiredEarp** » Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:58 pm

If the price is right, the 920 would probably be sweet.
However, don't expect 'VR'. Its usually more of a 'there's a screen floating in front of me that i'm watching' type of experience.

Roll on greater FOV

Post by **cybereality** » Fri Sep 23, 2011 6:15 pm

Well if you buy directly from Vuzix they have a 30-day money back guarantee, so if it doesn't work for your application you can always send them back. Honestly, in your case, I don't think an HMD is really going to help at all (in fact, I think it will hurt the experience). You should be looking into glasses-free displays if you ask me.

Post by **brantlew** » Fri Sep 23, 2011 7:34 pm

I hear you Cyber, but unfortunately I got the "itch" and I don't think I will be satisfied until I try this out. I'm gonna wait a couple of weeks to see if the introduction of the 1200VR drops the 920 prices a bit, but I will almost surely be getting a Vuzix. Besides...if it doesn't work out at least I still have my first HMD to play with.

Post by **cybereality** » Fri Sep 23, 2011 9:41 pm

Well I don't want to discourage you, its still fun to experiment with things. I know I bought the 1200VR, and will probably keep it, even knowing the quality is sub-par. Its just that I have specific projects that I want an HMD for and I like the tracking. So I could understand wanting one. I mean, you can get the Wrap 920 on eBay for like $250. At that price, its probably not bad just to mess around with. You can always add the tracker later for around $130. I don't think its a horrible buy in general, it just depends what you need it for.

Post by **brantlew** » Fri Sep 23, 2011 11:15 pm

I'll probably be getting the 920 VR Bundle from the get-go because head-tracking is my top priority on this project over image quality. I'm curious about your up-and-coming 1200VR review just to see if that could sway my decision in that direction, but it seems that the 2 or 3 reviews I have seen are pretty luke warm on the 1200 so I'm getting fairly confident with my decision.

I'll make sure to post my development progress over the next couple of months.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Sun Sep 25, 2011 9:36 pm

Look forward to seeing it! I have worked with telepresence before (In an underwater ROV system), it is a lot of fun. I have a lot of projects, but one of my side ones right now is building VR tablet of sorts. Basically, a wireless, autostereoscopic tablet that uses motion tracking to let you use it as a "window" into virtual environments, or control a tracker on a tele-head. If I can find a good solution for a wireless webcam, it would be pretty much perfect!

The reason I am stalling on building it (I have all the parts) is because it looks like autostereo Android tablets are going to be taking off, in which case, it makes more sense to use one of those.

Post by **brantlew** » Sun Sep 25, 2011 10:14 pm

PalmerTech wrote:Basically, a wireless, autostereoscopic tablet that uses motion tracking to let you use it as a "window" into virtual environments, or control a tracker on a tele-head.

Interesting. Sounds similar to the direction I am taking. Down the road I plan on experimenting with stereoscopic telepresence, but it's going to require a good deal of custom development so I haven't jumped in yet. Right now I have gotten away with using almost all off-the-shelf components like Skype for my video feed. Tacking on the head tracking for robot neck control will be a relatively minor addition. Adding the stereoscopic will be a larger undertaking because I will have to tap into the raw video feeds and do my own video encoding/transmission, etc. Any suggestions on good open source 2D and 3D video encoders?

Post by **WiredEarp** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 1:23 am

@ brantlew - Surely if you want to do stereoscopic, all you need is an extra camera, a set convergence (or a dynamic one), and another copy of Skype running and sending another video stream (assuming this is possible with Skype). Or are you talking about the receiving end and converting the 2 camera feeds into one frame alternating or packed feed?

@ PalmerTech - sounds a bit like the old school 'BOOM's. Only a tablet! Wicked!

Post by **brantlew** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 10:02 am

WiredEarp wrote:Surely if you want to do stereoscopic, all you need is an extra camera

Maybe as a prototype you could try to run two Skype instances and two separate feeds and combine them on the other side. One problem is that Skype resists running as two separate instances. But more importantly, I am running into substantial processing and bandwidth constraints right now just with a single feed. I experience a lot of latency hiccups and bandwidth throttling with my video. I think that if I had two separate video feeds - each independently trying to adjust for bandwidth then the end result would be nearly incomprehensible. For example, the left eye might stall video for a moment and adjust to a lower resolution while the right eye kept moving at the higher resolution. So to at least guarantee a synchronized experience for both eyes, I feel like I would need to combine the feeds so that the transmission behavior was consistent for both eyes. Additionally, you can get MUCH better compression on stereoscopic feeds if you make use of the side to side consistency between the images. So I can get far better network performance by transmitting a unified stereoscopic feed than two independent ones.

Post by **cybereality** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 7:08 pm

Well there is the Minoru 3D webcam:
http://www.amazon.com/Minoru-3D-Webcam- ... B001NXDGFY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I know the quality is so-so, but its an off-the-shelf solution.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 7:44 pm

The setup I worked with, we had the luxury of dedicated fiber optic tethers to the ROV, no network troubles to iron out. I used two cameras, side by side, and fed the feeds into Stereoscopic Player, which handled output to the 3D display.

For your purposes, I would look into something like this (There are lots of options): http://www.loreo.com/pages/products/lor ... p9005.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Basically, it uses a single camera to capture right and left in a single feed. You can feed this into Stereoscopic Player as a side by side feed, and push that to whatever kind of 3D display you want. Seems like a pretty good solution to me!

Post by **brantlew** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 8:13 pm

Unfortunately that minoru is the only 3D webcam I have seen out there, but I'm not very enthusiastic about anaglyph.

PalmerTech. That lens is really cool. That could actually simplify the design a lot. I like that I would not have to double up my camera hardware. I could prototype right off the bat even using Skype for video encoding (although I will probably still swap the encoder at some point). The automatic parallax adjustment would really be helpful as well. Only problem might be finding a supporting camera. Do you know any webcams that use swappable powered lenses?

Post by **bobv5** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 8:36 pm

You could just use a normal digital video camera I think. I haven't checked, but they probably will send out live video through firewire or hdmi or one of those other fancy modern ports that I don't really know about. Or use an old video tape camera with an analogue capture card in the pc. Some cheapo digital cameras have a webcam mode, no idea if this feature is also on decent cameras that would accept the loreo thing.

Post by **cybereality** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:09 pm

Minuro supports full color formats like interlaced and side-by-side. But something like the Loreo is going to be way better quality.

Post by **brantlew** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:20 pm

cybereality wrote:Minuro supports full color formats like interlaced and side-by-side. But something like the Loreo is going to be way better quality.

Oh hey thanks for noticing that, that must have changed recently because when I saw it a few months ago it only mentioned anaglyph. Now it certainly seems like a much more viable option, and believe me - I'm used to crap quality. Skype butchers my video far more than any webcam possibly could.

Post by **brantlew** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 3:33 pm

Thanks to all you contributors for the good advice and for the inspiration. I decided to go ahead and get the 920 VR Bundle for this project - my first HMD so I am now officially sucked into this little VR hobby. God help my precious free time and my pocket book.

I'm going to use this post as a sort of project diary. My overall project goal is to enhance the sensory experience of my telepresence robot as much as possible. The term telepresence is thrown around pretty loosely and usually just boils down to a roving video-conference. That's all my current equipment does as well. I would like to aim a little higher though and enhance the experience to the point that you might "just" begin to feel the sensation of real physical teleportation. So with that lofty mission statement - here is my rough task schedule.

1. View the 2D full screen Skype video feed with the 920VR and integrate the head tracker as a control mechanism for my robotic neck. The experience should be quite limiting because only pitch and yaw are supported by the neck hardware and the angular rotation is limited to about 110 degrees. Also I experience a lot of lag in the current implementation so I anticipate a "disconnected" feeling. Still this will be a very "natural" interface for this type of thing. Currently the neck is keyboard operating which is extremely awkward - particularly while driving. It is very difficult to drive and look around at the same time with the keyboard, but I expect with head-control that it won't be so awkward.

2. Create a custom camera hat to keep a webcam pointing at my face. This is basically for the benefit of the people on the other side so that as I move my head around, my face remains on screen. One of the main reasons I chose the Vuzix was because it is by-far the least dorky looking HMD. I might look a little "smug" to my coworkers wearing sun-glasses all the time, but that it far better than appearing on screen with a helmet or giant box on my face. The basic idea is just to sew a metal strut or wire into the bill of a baseball cap so that it protrudes from my forehead (like a unicorn

) and hang a web cam from it about 20 inches in front of my face.

3. Add stereoscopic video support. Right now I am thinking of using the Minuro web cam. It can generate side-by-side video that I can send right through Skype. Not sure yet if I need to tap the feed a special way on my side to view in 3D. This should at least prototype the concept a bit but I don't expect very good results because of Skype. I think Skype does a lousy job of encoding and throttling video which brings me to the next step.

4. By-pass Skype video and insert my own video encoder/transmitter. My hope is that I will be able to greatly improve video quality and responsiveness and also reduce lag on my control software (head tracking) as well.

5. Implement true 3D video compression instead of side-by-side 2D. I should be able to use a lot less bandwidth if I encode the video with a real 3D encoder that takes advantage of left-to-right symmetry. Hopefully this will reduce my lag even more unless the encoder itself is so CPU intensive that it introduces just as much lag.

6. Skype only does mono audio so I need to add a stereo microphone, get rid of Skype completely, and do my own stereo audio compression/transmission. Currently one thing that really destroys the experience is my inability to determine audio directionality. If I wanted to do it right I could even go for a 5.1 mic, but those are really expensive and I think that just adding stereo will greatly improve the experience.

The rest of these ideas are more-or-less just long term brain-storm ideas that I "might" approach if all this other stuff works out.

7. Replace the Vuzix with the PalmerTech PR2.. I would not be able to display my face on the other side but the deeper immersion would make it worth it. For person to person contact probably not the best idea, but in a round table meeting situation I can see this really improving the experience.

8. Build my own robotic neck from scratch. I'm using an off-the-shelf part right now that saved me boat-loads of effort but it has some issues. For one, it is not fast enough. It does not match the speed of normal head motions. I would like to create a unit with faster/stronger servos that could better match my head motions and also support more weight. It would also be nice to support roll in addition to pitch and yaw, but now we're starting to get into a fairly complex piece of hardware.

9. Some type of arms - not for manipulation, but for body language. Even it was a couple of straight sticks that I could wag around it would give me just a little bit more expressiveness on the other side. If I used a Kinect to do limb tracking and control those little sticks, then it might kick-ass....or not. I considered a reticulated arm, but that is a major effort and not sure if I'm up for it.

10. Attach sensors to my office chair so that the rotation of my chair would control the direction of my robot. I could use a little thumb joystick to move forward and backward and use the chair to steer. Not sure if this would be better or worse as a control mechanism??

That's all I got for now. I'm going to start ordering parts next week and should be working on this over several months. Comments and suggestions welcome.

Post by **cybereality** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:03 pm

Well, sounds like a plan.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 2:18 am

The stereo compression is a good idea. Most of those things I imagine you will be able to accomplish fairly easily, just a matter of lots of tweaking and setup. I'd go with the webcam as well. You want to leverage everything available already fully.

To get your 5.1, surely you can just use 3 stereo mikes.

What off the shelf part are you using? Standard pan/tilt servo mount?

I actually think the arms is the best idea. You are correct in that arms are highly expressive. However, it will probably lead you down the madness path to fully controllable arms

Everyone/whoever said it first, thanks for the Minoro webcam info. That could be useful.

Post by **brantlew** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 8:55 pm

WiredEarp - You are probably right about the 5.1, but I haven't looked into audio mixers enough to know the details. Does anyone have any experience or intuitive sense how much better 5.1 is than stereo through headphones?

I'm using this little gadget for my neck and I feel lucky that I found it.
http://www.trackercam.com/TCamWeb/powerpod.htm

Post by **cybereality** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 9:19 pm

See this thread for audio discussion:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=13149" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Post by **brantlew** » Wed Sep 28, 2011 10:07 pm

Wow! Thanks for the link. My mind is blown.

I'm at a real advantage here because I can customize the robot just for me. If I wanted to get crazy, I could make casts of my ears to make silicone ear copies. Then shove a little mic in the ear canal of each and put them on the sides of the laptop. That would nearly "exactly" sample what I would actually hear in person. I probably won't go to that extreme but the mind reels...

Post by **PalmerTech** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 4:31 pm

Binaural audio is astounding, can't believe I did not think of that for your application!

Post by **brantlew** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:57 am

My Vuzix 920 VR arrives next Monday. I don't own any games, so does anybody have suggestions for free or cheap software that will allow me to give the hardware a quick spin - preferably something that supports independent head-tracking and 3D. It does not have to be fun at all - just a tech demo. I was thinking Second Life but it appears the support may be crummy. Suggestions?

As far as my project goes - I have been researching video codecs a bit. There is not much out there in the way of low-latency 3D video codecs, but I have gotten some good ideas from pieces of other projects. I'm working on a customized variant of the x264 code base optimized for real-time streaming 3D. Sort of a niche application, but maybe some of you guys will find it useful when I release.

Post by **cybereality** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:00 pm

You can download a demo for rFactor, that has nice headtracking and 3D support. If you can buy something, I would recommend Unreal Tournament 2004 (NOT the Steam version, it needs to be the DVD version like Unreal Anthology). UT2004 has great headtracking support. You can use my mouse emulator, if you just want to test the tracking: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 01&p=64615" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . For 3D you can use the Stereoscopic Player, or even YouTube3D, both support side-by-side.

Post by **mAchiNE** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:23 am

I just read this thread now for the first time, nice project! I wish you the best of luck!

I was going to suggest Binaural for this but I see Cyber already beat me to it! it is perfect for this application, you need not mold your own ears onto the telerobot just attaching a set of binaural mics will give you some pretty amazing 3D sound!

Interesting that the LOREO 3D Lens in a Cap 9005 that Palmer linked to seems to be available in their online store now! I was down for a pre order for a few years ago it but there was a defect in the lens in the final production that somehow they did not notice until the first whole batch was already made! and I got an email saying that the product line had been canceled indefinately becuse of that.... I gues they fixed the problem and decided to re release it,

anyway I stray off topic, I look foward to seeing how this project progresses!

Post by **brantlew** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 7:51 am

mAchiNE wrote:I just read this thread now for the first time, nice project! I wish you the best of luck!

Thanks. Haven't made much progress yet. I finally got my equipment last week (Vuzix and Minoru) but have only taken a cursory look at them. My impressions of the Minoru are not very good, and I am currently in driver/software hell with it and Win 7/Skype. I got it to work a little in XP and I was underwhelmed so I will probably downgrade the importance of stereoscopic vision in the project. (It requires the most work and probably offers the least payback)

I've been playing with the 920VR this week. The image is about what I expected from all the reviews I have read and is fine for my needs. I'm disappointed with the tracker however. It's accurate enough positionally, but I didn't anticipate so much lag. I see why people use optical trackers now. Maybe as a side project I will try to do a Track IR knockoff using a WiiMote. Seems fairly straight forward - in fact I would be surprised if someone hasn't already done it. Anyway, I started toying around with the Vuzix SDK last night and expect to have robotic neck control pretty soon.

Unfortunately too much of my time has been sidetracked mentally designing omni-treadmills in that other thread so it has delayed this project, but it looks like that discussion is coming to a close finally so I can concentrate more on this. Of course I've got a Kinect still sitting in a box that is "calling me" to play with it. So many hobbies and so little time...

Post by **mAchiNE** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:48 pm

brantlew wrote: So many hobbies and so little time...

I hear that!

Post by **cybereality** » Wed Oct 26, 2011 5:44 pm

The Vuzix 6TC tracker actually doesn't have too much lag, if you use the SDK. I think for the gaming driver they add aggressive smoothing. You can try my mouse emulator, you will see the lag is reasonable. Even then I am still doing smoothing, and its not so bad.

Post by **brantlew** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:18 am

Wow. Check this out! This is what the concept looks like with the adequate resources applied. I don't know what you call this: telepresence or teleexistence (their term). Maybe "teleinhabitation" or "telemanifestation" Whatever...I bet if feels surreal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMF0p15G ... r_embedded[/youtube]

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Robot-Avata ... 13103.html