| By :
Jamie Simpson
Telepresence is a term that was coined by Marvin Minsky in 1980. He co-founded the artificial intelligence laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He used the term to elaborate and modernize an older concept called teleoperation. Teleoperation refers to controlling robots from a distance using sources like Wi-Fi Internet. His vision was to incorporate having a remote participant actually feel as if they were present. In 1993 David Allen and Harold Williams formed the first company to have a successful telepresence device. The idea stemmed from their previous venture of owning resorts. They often saw businessmen needing to shorten the length of their stay in order to travel to attend a meeting somewhere else. The idea of being able to join a meeting from a remote location seemed like a plausible solution. The Hilton hotel chain bought into the idea and installed the first devices in some of its hotels. However not many people used the service and they later backed out of the deal. After much negotiation, loss, and renaming of his business, David Allen survived the hard times and ended up selling his company to Polycom for $60 million. Polycom began its interest in video conferencing products in the late 1990s. From 1998 to 2005 they began manufacturing products such as PC-based communication systems, IP telephony devices, installed voice systems, and video conferencing software. Acquiring the system from David Allen was a logical step for Polycom to take in 2007. Large corporations now use this technology to hold video conferences with people from remote locations all over the world. A man in China can sit in on a board meeting in New York. It is much more sophisticated than just hooking up a web cam to a computer and listening in. It's a fully integrated process and a rich experience that makes the remote user actually feel as if he or she were present at the other location. The video quality for the remote user is high definition and also usually equipped with a 3-D like or holographic quality. The person's line of vision will include the entire room of the remote location making it seem as if he were actually there looking around. The user will be viewing this either on a large wrap around screen or small lenses that are placed right in front of the eyes. The sound is of the highest quality and clarity. Stereophonic sound is used as opposed to microphonic sound. This is two or more sound waves coming in to the remote user in a stereo setting that will play through multiple speakers. This helps stimulate the hearing so much that he can actually feel as if the speaker is right there in the same room with him. With this technology evolving more each day, the uses of telepresence will only continue to grow exponentially. More than just a device for businessmen and movie makers, it has the potential to make huge changes on the way the world communicates.
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