Our World of Telepresence

I am Jacob from Intrepid ProtoWorks. I am a consultant in the field of Human Factors. Today is a little bit different as up to now, we have primarily focused on tutorials using python for statistics. This video will involve neither of those concepts. But rather will dive into a concept which has been central to rise of human factors. That is, telepresence. Later on we will discuss some other elements relevant to the area, but today, let's keep our focus reasonable. This may be a term you are not familiar with. So let me break it down. “Tele” comes from the greek for “Far, far off” and presence simply means to be in a location or state or fact of existing. So, telepresence means to exist far away.

Now, there are applications which you may have never know life without which fall into this category. For example, some of you may even be watching this video on one such device. So, let's start with that.

The Tele-phone. We know what tele means, and well, phone here just means sound or voice. So, far away sound. Telephones have become a significant part of how we relate to those around us. This is advanced further by smart phones themselves. Phones have been shaped by what us, humans, have wanted from them, and consequently, human factors have been riding along the way. Some of the research goes back to more than 50 years ago. For example, Fitt’s law has helped us understand the size of buttons to use. Our understanding of how we hear sound and linguistics are also huge.

Now, we get to technology which has become popular over the past ten years or so. Things like Skype are also, confusingly enough called telepresence applications. You see a lot of big tech companies going this direction now. In here, we are looking at applications which transmit you visage, your face, across the world. Not only to you get to hear someone’s voice, but you get to see their face and their reactions to different things.

Now, we get into some of the more interesting topics. We see a lot of excited research coming our way in recent years. Areas like mobile telepresence like drones, or robots which work almost like mobile skype.

These sorts of devices let us go places which may be difficult otherwise. In the case of a drone, we can go up in the air and see a literal birds eye perspective of the area around us. This can be done for recreation, security, or other reasons.

The military has been using this type of tech for years. A fellow finished grad school a few years before me at the same university, once told me a story about how, when he was first hired to work for a civilian military contractor. He was hired to help develop user interfaces for drones. How, when he was being given a tour, they were looking at were soldiers flew drones from, a control room of sorts. While he was being shown around, one of the people piloting a drone took off their headset and set it down, then walked out of the room. My friend then asked “What was going on there?” and the person giving the tour said to him, “Oh, he probably got shot down…” and then moved on.

Now, how true that is, I am not sure. However, it brings up an interesting point all the same. Mobile telepresence allows us to do dangerous things without risking our own lives. That soldier who may have been shot down, they got to go home to their family. Politics and other military uses of drones aside, it is amazing that, at the end of the day… They went home…

Now, in another application which is becoming popular. We see these little devices which look like tablets on a scooter. You see them advertised as a way to still interact with family from afar. These applications certainly have some merit. However, their power I think comes in elsewhere.

Take for example, a security guard in a building. They need to check on certain places and need to maintain a certain schedule. They also need to maintain a certain level of awareness of the overall location they are charged with. Rather than patrolling a far off area physically, they can go there remotely. Certainly applicable for all situations, but there are a lot of times where a guard is there to report information they find to the police.

We see this sort of telepresence taken to the extreme with NASA. Their rovers for example are telepresence devices which allow us to explore worlds other than our own. These devices have pushed our understanding of places like mars further than what would have been otherwise possible. Now, these sorts of devices changes considerably in how human interact with them. Every motion is planned carefully and there are a great many sensory tools which can gather information on its surroundings as well.

Over many years NASA has sent a number of telepresence devices which have served in different capacities. We have had a number of landers going back decades. We have several devices there now. Including an orbiter, lander, and a rover. Each one of these with very different purposes. However, they all still serve as a way to teleport our presence to another location.

Telepresence can go even further than this. There is a concept which is sometimes called humanoid telepresence. This takes what we have discussed to now to a comparable extreme. Often teleporting our face, though often our voice. But our ability to interact with the environment.

The distance we can teleport our ability to interact with our environment is really only limited by our technology. We can reach out and very literally touch something thousands of miles away.

The technology exists today to do this, as a matter of fact, there are already some projects which include this very technology. One such project, again, going back to NASA, is called the NASA Robonaut. This device is intended to be able to replace at least some of the extravehicular activities or EVAs, which need to be done by people. However, the potential does not stop there. Imagine, a specialized doctor being able to lend their expertise to someone in need thousands of miles away. Yep, you guessed it, that also already exists. Today, there are actually quite a number of surgeries which have been completed with devices like the da Vinci machine.

Those are just a couple of early examples of what is some extraordinary and exciting technology. We have only really seen the start of what we can do. For example, we could possibly use humanoid telepresence to reduce the need for lethal force. Actually, there are many non-lethal options for detaining a criminal which become available is there is no longer a concern for it also disabling the police officer.

This could also be applied further to military applications. Again, I know this side is likely controversial. However, I am sure many of you who are watching this are have family who were deployed abroad, or you yourself has been deployed abroad. Imagine, being shot in a conflict, then, simply take your headset off, tell your boss you are taking a break, and head home to your family.

Or imagine being to put a headset on and be immediately on site for a medical emergency at a geriatric facility while an ambulance is on the way.

At the end of the day the possibilities are near limitless. Some of these are unquestionable good, some are not. What do you think?