[From The Oxford Press in Oxford, Ohio; more details are available here] [Image: A screenshot of the virtual reality mandala created by AIMS students working on projects to help preserve Tibetan culture] Miami students work on digital archives for Tibet By Caitlin Kluener Contributing Writer September 13, 2010 OXFORD — Students and faculty alike are anxiously awaiting the arrival of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at Miami University for his public lecture Oct. 21. A group of students headed by Glenn Platt and the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies, however, has other plans for him. They plan on asking His…

[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog] Thursday, August 05, 2010 A Strange New Take on Telepresence Could a blob-like robot better convey the presence of a remote user? By Kristina Grifantini Many telepresence robots–like Anybot and Texai–resemble a teleconferencing system on wheels. Roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who has previously created some unnervingly realistic humanoid machines, has a different idea. His newest and arguably most unsettling robot yet is Telenoid, which resembles a barely-formed robotic child, with a soft body, clay-like face and stubs instead of limbs. Ishiguro explains that Telenoid is meant to represent a human presence, and could be used…

[From Space Daily] [Image: DLR’s Space Justin is to be deployed in space as a service robot] Outer Space Close Enough To Touch by Staff Writers Bonn, Germany (SPX) Sep 08, 2010 Telerobots (remotely controlled robots) can be used not only in outer space but also in terrestrial environments that are hazardous for human beings, such as minefields or areas affected by nuclear radiation. Innovations derived from virtual reality telepresence and teleaction are also being employed in technology for medicine and production environments. The German Aerospace Center leads the world with its research into the field known as ‘multimodal telepresence’.…

[From The Chronicle of Higher Education’s College 2.0 blog] September 6, 2010 The Celebrity Effect of Scholarly Videoconferencing By Jeff Young Singapore—For some researchers in the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology, every Tuesday means another meeting by videoconference. Findings are shared, research procedures are debated, and suggestions for next steps are decided with people who in some cases are known only as an image on a screen. Maroun Khoury, a postdoctoral associate for the effort, which runs joint research projects between the two locations, recently found out that the giant high-resolution screens in the conference rooms at facilities here…

[From The Globe and Mail] Driving a message home with an optical illusion By Rebecca Lindell Vancouver – From Thursday’s Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Sep. 02, 2010 It’s already on the big screen, but now a 3D image is being used on the streets of West Vancouver in an attempt to jolt reckless drivers into reality. Motorists travelling on 22nd Street in West Vancouver will be confronted with a 3D image of a little girl chasing a ball in the street starting next Tuesday. The girl will be an optical illusion, but the scenario is very real, according…

[From memeburn] [Image: A scene from a virtual version of Guantanamo Bay prison] Immersive journalism uses virtual gaming platforms to tell stories By Nonny de la Pena Ernest Wilson, the dean of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism, put it like this: “What if, after receiving the home and garden section in the morning, the reader could walk right into the section and visit a garden?” This bucolic vision reflects one potential scenario for what we at the Annenberg school are calling “immersive journalism,” a new genre that utilises gaming platforms and virtual environments to…