Giga Games 1/Giga Games.iso/net/vir_real/papers/jacobson/bobswedn

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91-11/Bob.Sweden.1
From: [e-mail] (Bob Jacobson)
Subject: Report on Swedish Activity, October 1991
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1991 21:36:02 GMT
Organization: HIT Lab, Seattle WA.



    My affinity for things Scandinavian, and particularly Swedish,
was increased by my attendance at the recent conference, "Telepre-
sence -- A New Concept for Teleconferencing," held at Linkoping
University on 24-25 October 1991; and a subsequent visit with
principals of Infologics AB, a telecom think-tank launched by the
Swedish telephone company, Televerket.  I want to record these
experiences for the net community, and especially those sci.v-w
readers residing in Europe for whom the Swedes might be useful
colleagues.  In fact, Sweden is poised to join the EC and recently
entered into a "most-favored" trading status with the EC as one of the
EFTA members.  What's happening in the North should be seen as a
resource for the nascent European VR industry.

    Before I landed in Sweden, however, I had the good fortune
while in transit trhough London's Heathrow Airport to meet with Dr.
Michael Cooley.  Dr. Cooley was lead designer at Lucas Industries
during that firm's hostile takeover in the 1970s.  To demonstrate
what Lucas was capable of, he inspired and led Lucas's dissident
designers in the creation of over a hundred new products the com-
pany could have profitably sold if its new owners had been more
interested in production than downsizing.  Today Dr. Cooley is
directing an EC-FAST program to develop a human-centered
workstation, to which virtual environments might be an essential
addition.  I sat and listened for most of the two hours we spent
together as Dr. Cooley weaved together an incredible tapestry of
pertinent ideas about the Renaissance architects and artists,
medieval crafts guilds, modern industrial technopolies, and the
business of building things that really serve people's needs.  This
man is a genius who should be sought out by more people in our
field.

    Later that night I arrived in Linkoping (which in Swedish has
an umlaut over the "o") after a 150 km drive from Stockholm's
Arlanda International Airport in the company of my good friend,
Jerker Andersson, a researcher and VR advocate working at Infolo-
gics.  Our conversation was characterized by Jerker's sense of wit and
whimsy which the Swedes bring to their easy command of English,
but suffice it to say that after a nine-hour plane ride, my repartee
was limited.  (By the way, on trips to the North, I recommend flying
British Air if you can.  Excellent food and video.)

    The Telepresence conference was organized by Dr. Robert
Forchheimer, professor of electrical engineering at Linkoping Univer-
sity, and two of his graduate students, Anna Linderhed and Bengt
Kvarnstrom, as part of the COST #229 WG.5 Workshop.  COST is a
trans-European scientific and engineering collaborative that predates
the European Community.  COST researchers put together research
initiatives to address issues of common interest.  This Workshop was
the first to address issues which we might know best as Rtelevirtual-
ity," and is part of the WG.5 workgroup that Dr. Forchheimer is
organizing on telepresence issues.

    Attendance at the conference consisted mostly of Linkoping
faculty and students, with guests from the Stockholm research
community and one researcher each from Switzerland (Christina
Breitender), Portugal (Antonio Casimiro), and the United States (me).
This is typical of Swedish (and some would say most European)
gatherings, which tend to be insular due to imperfect communica-
tions across national and cultural boundaries.  Linkoping University
itself is a hotbed of technical activity, however, so the conference
was both engaging and instructive.  Moreover, Swedish industry,
which unfortunately was not well-represented at the conference, has
made substantial investments in the Linkoping industrial-research
parks, which added some energy to the gathering.

    The Proceedings of the Workshop, "Telepresence, a New
Concept for Teleconferencing," is available from the Department of
Electrical Engineering (Attn:  Anna Linderhed, Linkoping University,
S-581 83, Sweden; (46) (13) 139 282 fax, (46) (13) 281 000 phone;
[e-mail]).  The contents include summaries of the main
presentations at the conference:

    "Telepresence/Televirtuality in America, Europe, and Japan,"
        Robert Jacobson, HIT Lab, Seattle

    "A prototype remote inclusive interface," Johan Andersson,
        Chalmers Institute of Technology, Gothenberg

    "The SICS TelePresence System," Lennart Fahlen, DS-lab,
        Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Stockholm

    "Telepresence in Virtual Worlds," Christian Breiteneder,
        University of Geneva, Geneva

    "Telepresence, a proposal for communication between humans,"
        Bengt Kvarnstrom, Linkoping University

    "Human motion control in a synthesized environment," Olov
        Fahlander, Linkoping University

    "Telepresence, some aspects of the Interface," Jerker
        Andersson and Lasse Hellquist, Infologics AB, Sollentuna

    "The X-Ray Factory," Kai-Mikael Jaa-Aro, NADA, KTH (Royal
        Institute of Technology, Stockholm

    (It was a special pleasure hearing Johan Andersson's and Kai-
Mikael Jaa-Aro's presentations:  both were summer interns at the
HIT Lab and their work was obviously of interest and importance
among their Swedish colleagues.)

    Additionally, Dr. Forchheimer spoke of his work in video
compression and transmission and how it fits into the televirtual
framework; Lennart Fahlen demonstrated SICS unique software for
building virtual worlds, including input of raw video; and Bengt
Kvarnstrom showed the simple but servicable headset built at
Linkoping out of video-camera viewfinders.  Also, Anna Linderhed
briefly discussed her work in 3-D sound, which has since been
published as a master's thesis while she has moved on to broader
system design issues.

    Surprisingly, this was the first formal get-together for the two
groups of Swedish researchers, from Linkoping and Sweden, and
although it resulted in a promise of collaboration, there was some
lingering disappointment about how much progress might have been
delayed by this insularity.  (The same might sadly be said, on a
larger scale, about European research efforts generally.  We still have
yet to hear from any French researchers on sci.virtual-worlds!)  In
the offing are plans for Linkoping to supply its formidable hardware
talents to the combined Swedish effort, while SICS hunkers down to
the task of refining software tools.

    I must thank Dr. Forchheimer for the warm and collegial
atmosphere in which the Workshop was conducted; absent was the
usual ego-tripping and combative quality of too many similar events
in other venues.  Perhaps this comes of having very few people to
undertake major R&D efforts, which means there can be no slack or
energy wasted on vain disputation; or maybe itUs just some "Swedish
way."  But everyone left Linkoping with a sense of accomplishment
and camaraderie in the face of a difficult but common challenge,
moving the televirtual application ahead.

    In a meeting after the conference, I was the guest of Lasse
Hellquist, principal designer, and Birgitta Carlson, president, both of
Infologics AB.  Lasse, who lives in a typical 18th-Century home in
one of Sweden's oldest and most picturesque districts, has many
intriguing thoughts regarding the uses of televirtual systems, many
of which center around 3-D mapping and cartographic representa-
tions of spaces and places which people visit, either in the real or the
virtual world.  Ms. Carlson hosted me in Infologics's Sollentuna office,
where her team (including my other Andersson friend, Per, joined in)
and I broke bread together and, over cheesecake and dark Swedish
coffee, discussed televirtuality as a genuine telecommunications
service for the future in the context of the "distributed corporation,"
a favored model in Europe and Sweden.  Whether Televerket takes
Infologics's advice, to move in this direction, remains problematic;
but certainly, some of Sweden's top technologists are now committed
to realizing this possibility.

    Before leaving Stockholm, I was generously offered an audi-
ence by Lars-Olof Noren and Thomas Backstrom of Ericsson Business
Communications AB, in Stockholm.  Ericsson is the world's largest
manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and its exports
travel to nearly a hundred countries around the world.  I'm not free
to discuss all of what we spoke about, but I do believe that the
televirtuality/telepresence concept is uppermost in the minds of the
Swedish research community and may be first expressed with a
Swedish accent in this domain.