Peach - Presence Research in Action

Perhaps a useful vision for the field is that we are trying to develop technologies empowering us to control our reality through efficient control of information. We want to regulate how we "see" the universe, and how the universe sees us.

In the context of human-machine  confluence, in Presence we are trying to develop the ultimate interfaces. Presence can be seen as the ultra-interface, because if through this membrane you feel it is real, you will be more empowered. Of course, you may want to have control over that as well!

You will also want to control how the rest of the universe (including others) see you, and what they have access to. Your heartbeat. Your identity. Your history. Your appearance. And yes, you will want to block out all the spam coming to you through the ambient intelligence.

Simple example which is actually not too far fetched:  it is raining outside. It is a cold night and you have to drive for hours. You get into your car. You tell your car you want to drive in fair weather and sunny conditions. Actually, the road is a bit boring. You want to feel as if you are driving by the ocean. You want to see the ocean! And you are in a funny mood, and you would like to see only 60's Ferraris in the road.  The LCD display takes over the windshield and side windows, and the onboard computer and machine vision systems do the substitution for you. The substitution is safe. The car sensors use GNSS, IR and UWB to monitor the environment, and they provide you the right information with the "flavour" you requested. The onboard safety systems, the future of ABS, are also actively scanning the situation and planning ahead of you. I think that using GNSS technologies, car to car communication and other sensors, we could do quite a bit of this today.

In the same way as clothing protects us from the elements, we will need a personal Presence membrane or Reality bubble to intercede and protect us from the information universe and empower social collaboration and much more. Our (Virtual or Mixed) Reality bubbles. Our reality membranes.  By looking out through it the distinction of what is real and what is virtual will certainly fade.

Will Presence move towards the development of a personal universe layer between us and the rest of the world?

Anyhow, here is a list of the Challenges I've collected so far from the community (and a few of my own).

• Making possible real-feeling meetings using full immersion. Get rid of travel and work to reduce climate change!
• Implementing haptic interaction with feedback in VR or in tele-operation for “Joint Action”
• Realizing the Matrix: creating technologies and the science for “jacking in”: direct brain interfaces
• Creating a Teleportation Gateway (as in the Holodeck in Star Trek). You walk into a room and suddenly you are somewhere else. And you didn't have to suit up or anything!
• Achieving Presence in other cultures and times: using VR to go and visit an experience them there
• Delivering interactive storytelling in virtual reality. The future of cinema
• Creating better systems for rehabilitation using immersion
• Creating real feeling persons in virtual reality (virtual people)
• Living Parallel lives using virtual clones; altering the feeling of history through memory alteration
• Manipulating subjective time in immersive environments
• Creating architecture through immersion
• Supporting space travel and exploration/colonization (feel as in Hawai’i while on your way to mars)
• Creating the ultimate haunted house

Finally, I attach  my presentation to FET today in the Human-Computer confluence workshop.