Collaborative Telepresence

We propose to develop and study Collaborative Telepresence, a technology motivated by the appeal of "liveness" in sports, music, and theater that will allow users to not only view live remote events, but to collectively participate in them. Collaborative Telepresence requires hardware, software, and new interfaces that will allow audience members to interact with each other and with the remote environment. With new interfaces and system architectures, users can intuitively share control of a remote camera, robot, or skilled human "Tele-Actor".

Collaborative Telepresence is now feasible and practical due to recent advances in broadband Internet, local wireless digital standards (802.11x), video teleconferencing standards (MS Media Player), and Gigahertz processing capabilities at both client and server, which will be enhanced by future developments in bandwidth and set-top box technology.

Our primary research hypothesis is that Collaborative Telepresence is feasible using off-the-shelf hardware and that there exists entertainment applications for which CT is more compelling than (passive) live video. Our secondary hypothesis is that event promoters will provide access to their events to supplement live attendance.

To test this hypothesis, we will develop and test a working system with live Bay Area sports and music events. This system will include new capabilities that facilitate dynamic social groupings and competition through audio, video, and textual chat. We will assess user satisfaction with online user feedback and statistics.