[extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] 'Teleporting' over the internet

[Terry W. Colvin]

< http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4102018.stm >
 

Computer scientists in the US are developing a system which would allow
people to "teleport" a solid 3D recreation of themselves over the internet. 

Professors Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein of Carnegie Mellon University in
Pennsylvania think that, within a human generation, we might be able to
replicate three-dimensional objects out of a mass of material made up of
small synthetic "atoms". 

Cameras would capture the movement of an object or person and then this data
would be fed to the atoms, which would then assemble themselves to make up
an exact likeness of the object. 

They came up with the idea based on "claytronics," the animation technique
which involves slightly moving a model per frame to animate it. 

"We thought that a good analogy for what we were going to do was claymation
- something like the Wallace and Gromit shows," Dr Mowry told BBC World
Service's Outlook programme. 

"When you watch something created by claymation, it is a real object and it
looks like its moving itself. That's something like the idea we're doing...
in our case, the idea is that you have computation in the 'clay', as though
the clay can move itself. 

"So if it was a dog, and you want the dog to move, it will actually move
itself. But it is a physical object in front of you - it's not just a
picture or hologram or something like that." 

Special suit 

Fans of science fiction have long been interested in the idea of
teleportation - where an object, or even a human being, is transported from
one location to another instantaneously. 

Professor Goldstein has envisioned that, eventually, the objects will be
built with "nano-dust" - tiny objects that can be programmed to bind to each
other and move - but currently they are trying to build at a much larger
scale, working with objects the size of table-tennis balls. 

Their original plan was for the application to work in face-to-face
interaction. 

The technology mirrors that used to create the character of Gollum

"I'm in Pittsburgh, and you're in London. How do we make that happen?" Dr
Mowry said. 

"We can't teleport somebody - nobody's going to travel anywhere - but if
we're in our own rooms a system of cameras will capture exactly what's in
each room." 

He said that these cameras would work much the same way as the character of
Gollum was created by capturing the movements of actor Andy Serkis in the
Lord Of The Rings films. 

Mr Serkis wore a special suit and the cameras were able to interpret his
movements. 

"That information is turned into some representation - a three-dimensional
version of an mpeg [computer video file] - like a DVD," Dr Mowry added. 

"You capture it digitally, ship it over across the network, and then
reproduce a physical object that looks just like the original object, and
moves just like it." 

And he stressed this would be useful for much more than simple video
conferencing. 

"It's very artificial to talk to somebody through a glass wall, which is
effectively what you have when you have a screen," he added. 

"You want to forget the fact that you're in different rooms." 



-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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