Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
An ESP may be equipped with a transparent head-mount display. In this case,
the ESPer may see as if invisible persons were really in the real space.
The invisible person system is useful because we can realize human
communication between a user in real space and a user in virtual space (i.e., a
remote place). In particular, the realities of an invisible person and a real person
provide each of them with a sense of existence and affinity of the other; this is very
important in human communication. We show several useful situations in our
daily lives.
A person who cannot go out from an office due to his/her tight schedule can be
an invisible person and visit other places. He/she can meet other persons to negotiate
business issues in his/her short spare time. He/she can also go home to do household
matters. If he/she uses conventional tools such as email, a remote conference system,
or remote operation tools, it is generally difficult to negotiate with other persons
or to achieve complicated operations in his/her home. Therefore, in a practical
sense, he/she has to go to the objective place to directly see the persons or to
directly operate something. On the contrary, we may achieve most of such matters
by using the invisible person system. If real persons can feel as if each invisible
person exists in the place, the meeting or the negotiation will proceed smoothly.
Moreover, if the virtual space reflects the real space in considerable detail, we will
be able to achieve various kinds of complicated activities as an invisible person.
An employee who lives apart from other members of his/her family can have a
dinner every night with them as an invisible person. A person who cannot take a
long vacation can go abroad as an invisible person. Joining a telecommution or
remote learning system as an invisible person will improve its effect compared to
other systems. An invisible person has the chance to have occasional communication
with those who are in a real place where he/she is currently visiting. A guard of a
building, a construction foreperson, a sightseeing guide, and a participant of an
auction have to be at certain places, and this can be effectively achieved if they
become invisible persons.
2.2
The Design of a Prototype System
As for the realization of the invisible person system, it should be first noted that it
is impossible for current computer technologies to realize a sufficiently realistic
environment. There are many technical bottlenecks that prevent us from achieving,
such as the concise recognition of real space, the user interfaces in virtual space,
the immediate reflection of virtual space onto real space, and the real time processing
of a huge amount of data.
In this subsection, we show our design of a prototype system
4)
. We focused on
the following points:
•
Reduction to a feasible design. We assume a common environment and do
not use special or expensive hardware as much as possible. By using special
hardware, we may enrich the reality of the environment, but the generality
for easy deployment is lost.
