[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…

[From NPR; the original story includes audio, video and additional information] [Image: Edward and Lavinia Fitzgerald in Savannah, Ga., have dinner while telecaregiver Denise Cady of ResCare, a camera monitoring service, looks on.] Wired Homes Keep Tabs On Aging Parents by Jennifer Ludden August 24, 2010 Part three in a four-part series The boomer generation that has grown up with e-mail, cell phones and video cameras is now using all of these things to help care for their aging parents. That’s leading to some odd dinnertime scenes, like the one that plays out every evening in the ranch house of…

[From Singularity Hub] Japan’s Augmented Reality Teleconference Room August 27th, 2010 by Aaron Saenz Get ready for teleconferencing in the round. NTT, the world’s second largest telecomm, has developed a new video room that allows users to share an overlapping virtual environment. Dubbed the t-Room, NTT’s next generation conferencing solution takes real time video of your friends and displays them on tall window-like screens surrounding you. Your image, in turn, is shown in a window in your friend’s t-Room. When you overlap in the same window you can see the other person ‘behind you’ in the screen. It’s a sort…