TeleHuman is a 3D, life-size teleconferencing technology that allows you to present a holographic image of yourself to a remote viewer. The device, was created by Queen's University researchers including professor Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab, who asks the intriguing question “Why Skype when you can talk to a life-size 3D holographic image of another person?”
Why indeed? Take a look at the following video that demonstrates TeleHuman technology.
(TeleHuman 3D hologram video)
Two people simply stand in front of their own life-size cylindrical pods and talk to 3d hologram-like images of each other. cameras capture and track 3d video and convert it into the life-size surround image.
Since the 3d video image is visible 360 degrees around the pod, the person can walk around it to see the other person’s side or back.
While the technology may seem like it comes from a galaxy far, far away, it's not as complicated as most would think. dr. vertegaal and his team used mostly existing hardware – including an array of microsoft kinect sensors, a 3d projector, a 1.8 metre-tall translucent acrylic cylinder and a convex mirror.
Fans of golden age sf master Edmond Hamilton recall the telestereo from his wonderful 1928 novel Crashing Suns:
Abruptly I was aroused from my musings by the sharp ringing of a bell at my elbow. "The telestereo," I said to Hal Kur. "Take the controls." As he did so I stepped over to the telestereo's glass disk, inset in the room's floor, and touched a switch beside it. Instantly there appeared standing upon the disk, the image of a man in the blue and white robe of the Supreme Council, a lifesize and moving and stereoscopically perfect image, flashed across the void of space to my apparatus by means of etheric vibrations...
(Read more about Hamilton's telestereo)
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