I have long been fascinated by telepresence, literally the ability to be anywhere. High quality video conferencing is a form of telepresence. I facilitate videoconferences for CMU classes that literally span the globe.
There are several types of telepresence. Passive telepresenceallows one to sense a remore location but not take any in situactions or influence or manipulate the remote location.
An example of passive telepresence is webcams. Fogcam at SFSU is the oldest functioning webcam. Webcams allow you to feel like you are somewhere else, but they are passive in the sense that you can't do anything except look around, although some webcams will allow to to move the camera around. Unfortunately, the CMU campus webcam has been decommissioned.
An intermediate form of telepresense involve mobile sensors. Cameras mounted on rovers, such as the discontinued Beam telepresence "robot" provides more active telepresence by allowing a viewer to move around. A lunar or Martian rover whose only purpose is observation fits in the category. Such telepresence can alter the remote location. For example, rovers leave tread makrs and trails in thedust and soil of the Moon and Mars.
Likewise there are increasing levels of influence upon a remote environment, until one acheives a more robust active telepresence. A remote control surgery (such as by Computer Motion and Intuitive Surgery machines) is an invasive form of active telepresense.
Moving beyond simple rovers and Beam-like mobile cameras, remote-operated vehicles involve a higher impact of activity in the remote location. This raises all sorts of legal questions. If a person can control an automobile located in a different state or country, where are they required to hold driver's licenses? If they are drinking and hit and injure someone, in which jurisdiction are they lcriminally and legally liable?
Another example are remote control aircraft. Modern remote aircraft (sometimes called drones) often include cameras. Hobbyist remote aircraft offer the ability to get fantastic views, but they are typically limited by radio wave limitations. Also, the use of remote aircraft is highly regulated even though many hobbyists are not aware of those regulations. They can be quite dangerous for other aircraft. Military and professional drones can literally travel across continents and take an active role in military fighting.
For near-Earth space communications, a significant issue is latency. An example can be seen with video conferencing software. A simple person-to-person connections usually comes across as near instantaneous, and lips sync well with sound. However, where a person communicates with a connection to another connection, one starts observing distracting time lags and a lack of syncing.
My interests include telepresence and long-distance human-to-human communications. Space exploration often requires communications with other humans, such as astronauts, on a purely remote basis. This is analogous to faculty and students communicating with each other in real time across continents and even the world. In fact, the distance involved in live academic communications often exceeds that between NASA Mission Control and crewed spacecraft such as the International Space Station.
What are the best practices? How can we better facilitate more effective communications. Likewise, spacecraft may operate in remote environments such as the Moon. How can remote participants better experience the remote presence of those spacecraft? What lessons are analogous to remote academic experiences, and how can this knowledge enrich remote classroom and student experiences?
Deep space is anything beyond Earth orbit. It will include the Lunar Gateway and any spacecraft on the Moon. Latency between the Earth and the Moon locations is noticeable, but modest, roughly on the order of one second due the distance from the Earth, and perhaps longer due to technology and configuration issues.
However, telepresence to locations such as Mars and beyond are considerably more problematic. Communications are limited by the speed of light, and Mars is far enough that roundtrip radio or laser communications require at least 20 minutes.
Two way telepresence is not limited to visual and audio communications. It is possible to transmit touch and movement. The Emerge device provides the ability to feel movement by a remote person's hands. (Disclaimer: the author was an early-stage advisor to Emerge).
An example of more advanced control and tactile feedback are the exoskeleton suits being developed at the Earopean Space Agency's Exoskeleton suit at ESA Telerobotics and Haptics Laboratory at ESTEC in Noordvijk, Netherlands.An exoskeleton can potentially control machinery or humanoid robots in inhospitable environments, such as on the Moon, Mars or asteroids, or allow a remote person to engage in in situ activies, such as a surgeon on Earth performing surgery on a patient on the Moon. Not that latency can become an issue, though, for moving spacecraft, the travel time for radio waves can make real time telepresence inpossible for very long distances sch as between the Earth and Mars.
An example of telepresence in the lab is Labsland, an educational tool to conduct lab experiments remotely on real equipment.
Telepresence in the classroom can be purely passive, where the instructor lectures to a remote location without the possibility on interaction or feedback. Such would be like watching a video. An intermediate level is where students can type questions for the instructo in a chat window. However, a two way connection between the instructor and remote participants, or an instructor and a remote classroom, allows for real time, active telepresence in both directions. Instructors can interact with students in real time, nearly as well as being there. Software and web platforms such as Zoom, Webex, Google Meet and Team Viewer provide for multidirectional active telepresence.
Some classrooms attempt to go further and display a remote instructor via three-dimensional holographic projection. Such devices can be challenging to maintain and are not widely used.