Big Blue Ceiling

Touch Telepresence

Conveying the sense of touch across a video call.

Eddie OffermannConcept, software architecture and engineering, demonstration

Role
Concept, software architecture and engineering, demonstration
Areas
Telepresence, Computer Vision, XR, Research
A hand touching a white tabletop where glowing pink and blue touch points are projected, with a compact projector unit standing at the back of the table.

Touch Telepresence set out to show what conveying touch remotely does, narratively and emotionally. Two projectors with laser light-plane detection turn any flat surface into a touch device, one at each end of the call.

We designed the exploration and wrote the software that packages touch into a data stream. In Unity we implemented a drop-in equivalent of Input.Touch that recognizes local and remote touch points alike, with one added parameter saying which side a touch came from. That made it easy to build games on top, and the exploration was demonstrated with several of them.

A five-step flow: laser light-plane detection finds fingertips on a flat surface, the touches are packaged into a data stream, sent over RTC, received by a Unity Input.Touch workalike that treats local and remote touches alike with a flag for which side they came from, and used by games.
One added parameter tells games which side of the call each touch came from.

Part of Enhanced Presence.

  • Touches from both ends of the call, shown on the same ordinary table.
  • The remote side's touches arriving on a tablet.
  • Close view of fingers on the white tabletop, each lit by a projected glowing point.
    Laser light-plane detection finds each fingertip on the surface.
  • A tablet on a desk showing several blue glowing touch points from the remote side.
    Several remote touch points at once.

  • Enhanced Presence

    A run of prototypes chasing the feeling of being in the room with someone far away.

    • Telepresence
    • XR
    • Hardware
    • Computer Vision
    • Research

  • Projection AR Tabletop Gaming

    Augmented reality projected onto an ordinary table, with touch.

    • XR
    • Hardware
    • Computer Vision
    • Telepresence
    • Research

  • Glasses-Free 3D Telepresence

    Volumetric calls on a 45-inch autostereoscopic display, no glasses required.

    • Telepresence
    • Hardware
    • Computer Vision
    • Research

  • HoloFlect

    A modular, upgradeable AR headset platform built for enterprise.

    • XR
    • Hardware
    • Computer Vision
    • AI
    • Optics
    • Research