Virtual Social Gathering

By marrying state-of-the-art video and audio communications technology with digital media, interactive devices and ambient intelligence, a team of European researchers hope to give people of all ages the opportunity to get together, play games, share experiences and generally communicate, interact and have fun even if they are thousands of kilometres apart. Their goal is to bring down the barriers between people – technological and social. Coupled with people moving and travelling more frequently for work and study, it is a situation that has led to families and friends spending less time together. Even in the same home many people now tend to entertain and educate themselves alone, whether it is the teenager playing computer games in her room, the father listening to music on his MP3 player in the lounge or the mother studying on her laptop in the kitchen. Technology has encouraged this isolation, but advances in that same technology could now reverse it. Working in the EU-funded TA2 (Together anywhere, together anytime) project, a team of researchers from seven European countries are aiming to turn the tables on technology by simply and affordably bringing telepresence into normal households.

Their vision is of groups of friends and family members seeing each other on their TVs, hearing each other through their stereo systems, sharing photos and videos and playing games almost as naturally as if they were in the same room. To make that possible, the TA2 researchers are developing the components necessary to build an affordable and easy to install in-home telepresence system. The components can then be used to build complete telepresence systems without the need for special rooms or big screens to bring people together virtually. A television set, sound system, cameras and microphones placed in a living room suffice to create a sufficiently interactive and immersive experience, while state-of-the-art software which is transparent to the end user manages the communications backbone. Children and the elderly, who often find themselves more isolated than other social groups in the modern world, stand to benefit particularly from the technology. One scenario, envisages a grandparent and grandchild playing a picture-matching game called pairs in which old photos could be used to trigger conversations and pass stories down through the generations.

More information:

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingType=Features&ID=91233