[Among the presence-evoking technologies useful during a pandemic is teleoperated robots. This story from Digital Trends describes how they’re being tested by the FamilyMart chain of Japanese stores; the original version of the story includes the impressive 1:20 minute timeline video from the website of the robots’ maker, Telexistence (it’s also available via YouTube). Coverage in VRScout begins with this: “Imagine walking into your local convenience store only to find the usual checkout person had been replaced by a remote-controlled robot operated in VR by a human being located hundreds of miles away”; see that story for more images and a 1:44 minute Telexistence video on “The Future Of Shopping.” A more detailed 2:30 minute video report on earlier versions of the company’s robots is also available on YouTube. And for a related development, see stories in American Inno and Smart Cities Dive about the testing of a teleoperated fleet of e-scooters in Atlanta and other cities.… read more. “Teleoperation in a pandemic: Japanese convenience stores testing VR-controlled robots”

[Effective social presence in virtual reality depends on realistic real-time digital representations of human eyes; this short story from UploadVR describes a new system developed by Facebook Research to accomplish this. The abstract of the detailed research report about the system concludes with this: “Our quantitative experiments show that our method results in higher reconstruction quality, and qualitative results show our method gives a greatly improved sense of presence for VR avatars.” You can find the abstract and full paper along with a 5:14 minute video (also available via YouTube) on the Facebook Research website. –Matthew]

Facebook’s Prototype Photoreal Avatars Now Have Realistic Eyes

Researchers at Facebook figured out how to add natural looking eyes to their photorealistic avatar research.

David Heaney
July 02, 2020

Facebook, which owns the Oculus brand of VR products, first showed off this ‘Codec Avatars’ project back in March 2019.… read more. “Facebook’s prototype photoreal avatars now have realistic eyes”

[Vox reports on a rare positive use of deepfake technology: disguising identities of vulnerable people who appear on camera while allowing viewers to fully “see” them. See the original story for two different images and three videos. For more details and a video about the process, see coverage in Documentary Magazine, which adds this important detail:

“It’s possible for the face veil to be completely undetectable. But France and his team wanted viewers to know who wore a [digital] veil and who didn’t. (The Russian activists generally did not.) ‘It’s an instant visual communicator that that person is in danger,’ Laney explains. ‘So for the first 20 shots, we turned the effect up to let the audience know.’”

A New York Times story has other details as well. –Matthew]

[Image: Source: Documentary Magazine]

How deepfakes could actually do some good

A new documentary highlights how the controversial technology can protect people.… read more. “New documentary highlights positive use of deepfake technology”

[I need to go experience the Philadelphia version of the interesting use of augmented reality and the presence it can evoke described in this story from The New York Times (where the original includes 5 different pictures and 2 short videos). For more details about the project, see the Art Production Fund website. Coverage in artnet News adds these important observations:

[Artist Nancy Baker] Cahill, who draws in VR before working with a tech team to convert her images to AR, is committed to the nascent medium. “It inherently has subversive potential. It is invisible to the naked eye, and yet it exists in that space,” she said. “I think it’s one of the most accessible ways of sharing and engaging in art, because you can experience it on phones and tablets.”

The work lasts a minute and a half and is accompanied by a soundscape designed by Anna Luisa Petrisko based on sounds of bells, both historic recordings and synthesized music. … read more. “‘Liberty Bell’ animated 3D AR public art at 6 historic sites explores liberty’s ideal amid today’s divisions”

[As this story from Forbes notes, Hybri isn’t the first attempt to create compelling digital companions, and it assumes the upcoming Kickstarter campaign will be successful, but it’s an interesting example of a social presence technology and raises lots of ethical questions. For example, coverage in Beebom includes this:

“[A] digital companion is not at all creepy, until it has the face of one of your loved ones who left you or even passed away. This feature makes Hybri one of the creepiest apps I have ever seen. … So, technically, you can use a picture of a person who is not anymore in this world to create his/her digital version. This is quite creepy and reminds of an episode of ‘Black Mirror’, in which a wife creates a digital version of her husband who passed away in a car accident.” (emphasis in original)

A story in the Daily Star, and the Hybri website and Kickstarter preview page (both of which include more information, images and videos), emphasize the romantic and even sexual uses of the technology.… read more. ““World’s first” digital human AI partner promises companionship during Coronavirus era”