The shutter glasses provide a stereoscopic view. The participant wears shutter glasses and has sensors on face, hands, and body to detect motion. The image’s motion is controlled by the real human’s motion. They can conduct a meeting as if they were gathered in the same place. They can have eye contact with each other. On the screen, 3D images of real human beings are displayed stereoscopically, and participants can have stereoscopic views of various objects displayed on screen. Each site has a virtual conference room with a large screen in front of seats. In this system, each participant is at a different location, and all sites are connected via the network. They can handle an object by means of hand gestures. They can view objects stereoscopically and have front or side views of the objects depending on their viewpoint. This next-generation video conference system provides participants a human-friendly environment for meeting and collaborating. By sitting on a seat and wearing special glasses, visitors can enter a large virtual flower and smell it.Īt ATR Communication Systems Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan, a virtual space teleconferencing system was developed in 1992. Upon entering the museum, we see a large screen in front of the seats. In Oita prefecture, Japan, there is a museum where visitors can experience a virtual world. Providing not only a 3D image of the landscape but also sound and smell helps us enjoy the scenery. When a virtual landscape is generated by VR technology, we can go there just as if it were a real landscape. In a human-friendly virtual environment, we can interact with a computer without any difficulties or barriers. We can grasp a virtual object by hand gesture and bring it to another place. The goal of VR is to provide human beings with a virtual environment where we can interact with a computer just as we do in the real world, that is, by talking with a virtual human in a spoken language, by writing a letter, or by drawing a picture. It is desirable to provide human beings with a human-friendly environment where we can interact with computers just as easily as we interact in human–human communication or human–environment communication. Human–human communication and human–environment communication have been developed over a long history of interaction. In human–computer communication, we interact with a computer by means of a mouse, a touch pad, or a keyboard. In human–environment communication, we recognize our environment via our five senses: feeling, touch, taste, vision, and smell. We write letters or draw pictures and sometimes communicate using images and motion pictures. In the case of human–human communication, a variety of means are at our disposal. The ability to enter and walk through the virtual world and handle virtual objects using hand gestures makes VR interactive, and this is one of its most important features.Ĭommunication can be human–human communication, human–environment communication, or human–computer communication. The virtual world allows us a stereoscopic view from front or side, depending on our viewpoint, just as in the real world. Through it, a virtual world is created that viewers can enter and walk through and where they can handle virtual objects. Virtual reality technology plays an important role in realizing Telesensation. Nobuyoshi Terashima, in Intelligent Communication Systems, 2002 11.1 VIRTUAL REALITY CONCEPT