Links

This page contains links to a variety of online resources related to telepresence. If you’d like to suggest an additional resource be included here, please contact us at ispr@ispr.info.

Organizations

Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). A professional society dedicated to advance the study of digital games, and to foster the development of research practices and standards in the field.

Edge Foundation. A non-profit organization established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA). The professional development network to advance the international business of producing and presenting giant screen experiences for the public.

Human Productivity Lab (HPL). A consultancy specializing in Telepresence and Visual Collaboration, Personal and Organizational Productivity, and Sales Model Optimization. The Lab was founded by Howard S. Lichtman, a productivity-focused technologist.

Interactive Media Institute (IMI). A 501c3 non-profit organization working to further the application of advanced technologies for patient care. The Institute is also active in conducting research and clinical trials, and specializes in virtual reality, telehealth, videogame virtual reality, and human-computer interaction research. IMI is actively working with world leaders who are experts in utilizing virtual reality, multimedia, computer-generated avatars, personal robots and other technologies to treat patients with both mental and physical disorders.

International Association of CyberPsychology, Training & Rehabilitation (iACToR) . An international non-profit association designed to promote Virtual Reality and other advanced technologies as adjuncts to more traditional forms of therapy, education, and rehabilitation. iACToR will address the urgent need to develop a “roadmap” for the future of this rapidly growing field. iACToR publishes CyberTherapy & Rehabilitation (C&R) and The Journal of CyberTherapy & Rehabilitation (JCR), and hosts the annual CyberTherapy Conference.

Community

Computational, Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience in Barcelona. This community is scattered across several research and academic institutions in the large Barcelona area, and congregate around common scientific activities to foster scientific collaboration and cross-fertilization. This webpage constitutes a gathering place to share events and initiatives that can be interesting to this community.

PEACH. A three year (2006-2009) Coordination Action led by Giulio Ruffini and Starlab Barcelona, supported by the European commission under the 6th Framework of the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) – Information Society Technology (IST) programme. Its main objective is to stimulate structure and support the Presence research community (academic & industry), with special attention to the challenges associated to the interdisciplinary character of the field, and to produce visions and roadmaps to support the construction of the Presence ERA.

Presence-research.org [offline as of 12/2009]. Presence-Research.org aims to offer relevant information and resources on (tele-)presence, i.e. the subjective experience of ‘being there’ in mediated environments such as virtual reality, simulators, cinema, television, etc. The site served as the home of Omnipres, a Coordination Action supported by the European commission under the Future Emerging Technologies (FET) – Information Society Technology (IST) programme.

Publications

Conversations on Presence: The Book. Transcripts of interviews with 11 presence scholars by PEACH Coordinator Leo Ruffini.

CyberPsychology & Behavior. A bimonthly peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. that explores the impact of the Internet, multi-media and virtual reality on behavior and society.

Emerging Communication. A publisher of state-of-the-art monographic volumes that examine a broad range of issues in communication technology, theories, research, practices and applications.

Journal of CyberTherapy & Rehabilitation (and other publications of the International Association of CyberTherapy & Rehabilitation). JCR is a quarterly, scientific, peer-reviewed journal that allows subscribers to take advantage of a rowing quantity and quality of research by academicians, researchers, and clinicians in the expanding field of virtual reality and advanced technology in therapy, training, prevention, education, and rehabilitation. The organization publishes several other valuable titles.

Kehoe. An online magazine from PEACH dedicated to serving the Presence community (Academic, industry, Public in general).

Issue 0 (.pdf)

Issue 1 (Spring 2007) (.pdf)

Issue 2 (Fall 2007) (.pdf)

Issue 3 (Spring 2008) (.pdf)

Issue 4 (Fall 2008) (.pdf)

Presence for Everyone. “A Short Guide to Presence Research” from PEACH.

PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. The MIT Press publication established in 1992 is “the first journal for serious investigators of teleoperators and virtual environments, incorporating perspectives from physics to philosophy.”

PsychNology Journal. A free online journal focussing on significant multidisciplinary advances in the study of human relation with technology.

Research and Design Projects

Cyberwalk. Despite recent improvements in virtual reality technology hardly any satisfactory solutions exist that enable users to physically walk through virtual environments in a natural way. In this project our goal is to significantly advance the scientific and technological state-of-the-art by enabling quasi-natural, unconstrained, and omni-directional walking in virtual worlds. The CyberWalk project follows a holistic approach, covering science, technology and application by integrating the necessary blend of cognitive understanding with high fidelity technological development, to end up with a fully immersive showcase.

INTUITION. A Network Of Excellence funded by the European Union under the 6th Framework of the European Commission (IST) focused on virtual reality and virtual environmentss applications for future workspaces. Goals include systematically acquiring and clustering knowledge on VR concepts, methodologies and guidelines; performing a review of existing and emerging VR systems and VE applications, and establishing a framework of relevant problems and limitations to be overcome; and identifying user requirements and wishes and also new promising application fields for VR technologies.

Multimodal Immersive Motion rehabilitation with Interactive Cognitive Systems (MIMICS). A research project founded by the European Union. The main hypothesis of this project is that movement training for neurorehabilitation can be substantially improved through immersive and multimodal sensory feedback. The approach is real-time acquisition of behavioural and physiological data from patients and the use of this to adaptively and dynamically change the displays of an immersive virtual reality system, with the goal of maximising patient motivation. This will result in complex systems that are natural, user-friendly and easy to use.

SENSATION. A European Union funded project that aims to explore a wide range of micro and nano sensor technologies, with the aim to achieve unobtrusive, cost-effective, real-time monitoring, detection and prediction of human physiological state in relation to wakefulness, fatigue and stress anytime, everywhere and for everybody.

SKILLS. An Integrated Project in the framework of the European IST FP6 strategic objective named “Multimodal Interfaces” and deals with the acquisition, interpretation, storing and transfer of human skill by means of multimodal interfaces, robotics, Virtual Environments (VE) technologies and interaction design methodologies.

Sound to Sense (S2S). A Marie Curie Research Training Network (MC-RTN) funded by the European Community that brings together engineers, computer scientists, psychologists, and linguistic phoneticians to explore new ideas about how humans understand speech. This knowledge can be used to improve the way people communicate with each other, and with machines.

Telepresence in Popular Culture. An ongoing project that involves a systematic analysis of science fiction and other portrayals in which fictional characters experience one or more types of presence. The goals are to better understand the possible forms and contents of future presence-evoking technologies and experiences; the types of presence-evoking technologies, experiences and applications that people want and fear; the reasons humans desire presence experiences; the different ethical issues and perspectives raised by advanced presence-evoking technologies; and the degree to which fictional portrayals have accurately predicted the form and content of new technologies.

Applications

3D Virtual Worlds List. A detailed list, with descriptions, links and video illustrations.

Afterworld. An immersive, multi-platform sci-fi series.

IMAX Corporation. Founded in 1967 and headquartered jointly in New York City and Toronto, Canada, IMAX is one of the world’s leading entertainment technology companies, specializing in immersive motion picture technologies.

Second Life. A 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.

Telepresence and Videoconferencing Industry Website Directory. Telepresence Options’ comprehensive directory of vendors, service providers and others related to the telepresence industry.

Enabling commerical technologies (from presence-research.org)

General resources

Stereoscopic devices

Head-mounted displays

Immersive projection displays/cinema

TV/video

Auditory interfaces

Haptic Interfaces

Olfactory interfaces

Motion tracking

VR solution providers

Historical Information

Other

Presence Pictures. Matthew Lombard’s collection of over 1500 images related to presence.

Presence products. Matthew Lombard’s collection of advertised presence-related products.

  • Find Researchers

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