Daily Archives: April 18, 2020

While it quickly became clear that the tech and developer conference held during the spring would need to be cancelled due to COVID-19, tech companies are beginning to pull the plug on events taking place later in 2020.

Today, Facebook announced that it would be shelving the in-person component of its virtual reality-focused Oculus Connect 7 conference due to COVID-19 concerns and would be focusing on a digital format. Facebook hadnt announced dates for the event, the conference is typically held in late September or early October.

In light of the evolving public health risks related to COVID-19, weve decided to shift Oculus Connect 7 to a digital format later this year, a company blogpost read. This was a tough decision to make, but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees, and everyone involved in OC7.

Earlier this week, California governor Gavin Newsom said it was unlikely that sporting events with fans in attendance would return this summer. While the major tech giants had already cancelled the in-person components of their spring and summer developer conferences, this cancellation calls into question how realistic timelines are for tech events that have been rescheduled from spring to the fall.

Conferences have long been critical to the indie games industry with small studios often using the gatherings to form relationships with publishers. With many of the virtual reality industrys major events shuttering over the past couple years ashype has waned, Oculus Connect has remained perhaps the most important event of the year for VR developers.

As with the in-person cancelation of F8, Facebook says they are making a $500,000 donation that will prioritize organizations serving local San Jose residents.

Read the rest here:

Facebooks annual virtual reality conference goes virtual-only - TechCrunch

I'd like to thank Valve for reminding me that virtual reality exists. Tucked away, deep in the cupboard under the stairs, lies my original Oculus Rift, complete with a pair of Touch controllers and all the various paraphernalia required to actually experience virtual reality in the home. It had been gathering dust for a year or so, untouched since that first wave of big virtual reality titles launched, but the allure of Half-Life: Alyx was too much for this old Valve fan.

So out came the OG Oculus, ready for me to dive back into a world of headcrabs and zombies. But actually, what I found inside that VR headset wasn't just the burst of nostalgia that I thought I was craving. Instead, it was a form of ultimate, totally absorbing, isolation.

In this current climate that we suddenly find ourselves in, I have to count myself lucky that I live with my partner in a house with a garden. I'm not having to endure all of this on my own, or dealing with being cooped up in an apartment with no outside space. But what I am struggling with is an unexpected amount of anxiety. I worry for my parents, my team members, the state of the world, the publishing and gaming industries, and what exactly is going to lie on the other side of this pandemic what the world will eventually look like.

There are few things that really, truly distract me from that anxious noise inside my head either. Yes, there's Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and my regular go-to distractors of cleaning and baking (although, honestly, I don't think I can eat any more banana bread), and there's even a little nagging tug in the back of my head to turn on the news. But when I put on that VR headset it's like the outside world, and all its negative energy, is completely silenced.

"I've got instant access to trainer-created workouts with BoxVR, and working my way through the Beat Saber campaign has proved a serious challenge"

From the moment I booted up Half-Life Alyx, it was clear that it's a marvel of video game engineering, capable of imbuing me with a sense of fear I never thought I'd experience in a digital world. I am genuinely terrified of the headcrabs, and running out of ammo is a horror in itself. Despite the fact that I'm basically swapping one anxiety for another, it came as a welcome relief to have such an absorbing distraction.

However, what started out as a mission to reconnect with Alyx Vance and co quickly transformed into something else entirely it's everything else VR has to offer that has become its true appeal. And it started with Beat Saber. Despite all the recommendations from friends, I'd stupidly slept on the rhythm-action dance game, and yet my first session with the game lasted over three hours and my arms ached for longer than I'd like to admit.

Beat Saber's particular brand of colourful excursion, and the gloriously sweat-inducing BoxVR, have become my daily fitness routine in lieu of, you know, being able to go outside or go to a gym. The ability to jump into a session of either of these fantastic games has become the next best thing. I've got instant access to trainer-created workouts with BoxVR, and working my way through the Beat Saber campaign has proved a serious challenge one I aim to beat by the time we're out of this isolation period.

Virtual reality has proven an oddly focusing fetish. Its ability to blind me to reality has become a powerful motivator to get fitter, and explore more digital worlds than ever before. It's a way for me to control how much of reality I can be exposed to, making me feel calmer and strangely more capable of dealing with everything else that's going on once the headset comes off. If you're lucky, like me, to have a VR headset in your household, dust it off and get it reconnected. There's so much more to explore so many fantastic games offering a variety of experiences and opportunities and it's a relief to know that there's plenty to keep my mind occupied bar the anxieties of current everyday life.

Own a VR headset and looking for something new to play? We've got a list of the best VR games for those of you with a PC and a more focused best PSVR games list too.

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Virtual reality is finally living up to my expectations of it being the ultimate escape from reality - GamesRadar+

Virtual reality, that mind-expanding bridge between the real and imaginary, is moving rapidly from an expensive, niche, high-tech tool into the consumer domain. Driving that trend are affordable and easy-to-use products like the lightweight Oculus headset, running about $300, and Googles Tilt Brush. At just under $20, that tool aims to put VR in the hands of creatives of any age and in the comfort of home.

What does this trend for VR mean for the emerging artist? At the School for the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts (SMFA), that question is informing a course taught for the past two years by Kurt Ralske, a professor of the practice garnering international attention for his facile use of technology. (For fans of alternative rock, yes, this is the same Kurt Ralske who started Ultra Vivid Scene in 1987.)

Today, as a visual artist, his video installations, films, sound art, and performances push the proverbial envelope and provoke futurist ideas about what art is and can become. His work has been included in the 2009 Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. He also programmed and co-designed the video installation permanently in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

At Tufts, he encourages students to plumb their imagination as they deploy digital tools to create something 3D that enhances the human experience. While given free rein to do that, he believes the best VR projects incorporate three elements: the interactive component of gaming, the clear narrative of cinema, and the meaningful space of contemporary art installations.

To learn more about what makes VR a popular course, Tufts Now asked Ralske and three of his recent studentswhose creative projects led them in three distinct directionsto talk about what VR means to them, and how they use it.

Kurt Ralske: With VR, There Are No Holds Barred

When I teach VR, the focus is not just the technology, but appreciating the philosophical and ethical issues the medium raises. If we create representations that are indistinguishable from reality, are there dangers? Its a philosophical question thats similar to Platos allegory of the cave.Viewers in VR experience what they believe is reality, but it is entirely an illusionas in Platos example, the shadows on the cave wall are perceived to be real. We discuss this at our first class meetingthe allegory of the cave and other ideas from Platos Republic are a useful way of approaching the questions that virtual reality raises.

VR is a very new medium, which means its not constrained by precedence. Students are not weighed down by history or a technique or a style. Thats what makes it a fun playground. Anyone can push it in their own direction.

Some students want to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, while others want to create a space that is conveys an atmosphere or a mood. Some create spaces that feel safe and calmingan escape from pressures they feel in the real world. I find that impulse very interesting.

My students are exploring a technology as artiststheyre tapping into their imagination and creativity, and theres no holds barredtheres no canon. There are no rules to break.

I think thats what students really like about VR, and why the course attracts a wide array of students; I have students from engineering, computer science, cognitive brain science, and philosophy, as well as fine art. They are unafraid of the technologya lot of them grew up with gamingand they are excited about the freedom and power that VR offers. As an instructor, I find the process of working with them equally exciting.

Billy Foshay (M.F.A. Candidate and VR Class Teaching Assistant): Expressions of an Altered World

My first project involved remaking an experience that I had at the dentist when I was eleven, which was I was given too much laughing gas, and everything around me became very flat and two dimensional. Virtual reality was a nice pick, because it expresses that slightly altered world.

Through the Tufts dental school, I was able to find a dentists chair. When people sat in the chair and put the headset on, they were in a virtual dentists office, with dentists doing what they would normally dolooking at your teeth. What I was trying to do, and what I want to continue to do, is set up physical spaces that people experience from a specific vantage point.

So in the case of the dental chair, they would be immersed in a virtual dental appointment. Nothings happening to you physically, but you have all the sensations: the visuals, the sounds, and even the smells. I remembered when I was eleven, they used laughing gas administered through a grape-scented nasal hood, so I added grape scent to the physical environment with some oil coating the dentist chair.

The hope was that when the grape nasal hood is referenced in the headset, a participant would become aware of the smell coming from the oil. This strategy attempted to further establish a linked experience between the inside and the outside of the headset, thereby increasing believability and effect of the piece.

This project is not meant to be scary, not at all. Its weird, perhapsand strange. People describe it as feeling like everything around you, including your body, is unreal. Thats what attracted me to the class, the tension between reality and unreality.

What gives us a sense of being in a place and what gives us a sense of being in our own body? It just made sense for me to get at this metaphysical question: how do I know where I am? Its a question that as an artist you want to explore and make personal, specific, original.

Virtual reality offers a level of immersionand it leaves us asking: whats real, anyway? I think its a question thats always been one that artists ask; with VR, artists are just pushing the envelope of immersion.

Anna Gruman (B.F.A. 2019): Karl Marx Doing a Choreographed Dance to Frank Sinatras Fly Me to the Moon

What VR can do is make the familiar strange and make the strange intimately familiar. Billy takes the familiar thing and infuses it with a sense of the uncannybut you can also go the other way and take outlandish images and make them knowable and experiential.

Thats the path I chose for my fifteen-minute, animation-based experiential fly-through. I wanted to render dream-like spaces and experiences; dreams are an arsenal to draw images and metaphors fromthey reassemble fragments of waking experience. For me, I have very vivid dreams; they inform my work regardless of my medium. I started in videoVR is a new experience for me.

Aesthetically, I was going for the strangeness of sci-fi, with the childish wonder of The Little Prince and surreal quality of Spirited Away, where the world is immensely vast yet self-contained. My piece starts within a bubble or dome containing a suburban neighborhood. You float through it as you listen to Mr. Sandman, which echoes through the space and distorts as you move. You arrive at a house on the door are the words YOU ARE HOME.

The fly-through method of VR means you control the direction of your gaze, but not the movement and position of your body in space. You are turned and exit the dome of suburbia into the external world, a vast colorful nebula of space. You couldnt see from the inside out, but from the outside the houses behind you are visible like a model train village.

Mr. Sandman fades away and is replaced by 70s style sitar music. I created 3D model figures of Karl Marx in a policeman uniform for the piece. Through a rainbow fog below you are an army of belly dancing Karl Marx police. You float around them as they dance in front of a giant simmering curtain with Marxs portrait. You are then transported from this dreamscape back to the YOU ARE HOME house.

You then enter into a long hallway that leads to a sparse living room. You sit down in an armchair in front of a television, on which a video plays. So, the VR is its own worldand theres a media world within the VR world which follows its own rules of narrative and symbolism. As the piece moves along, there is a closing dance routine. The work ends with a single Karl Marx doing a choreographed dance to Frank Sinatras Fly Me to the Moon in a Grecian temple made of leaves.

All these dream images are ultimately memetic reflections of what is in reality. Its an attempt to capture the material comfort and spiritual unease of upper-middle class America. The insulated experience of nuclear family households, sentimental nostalgia, insidious colonial fantasies, a world imbued with commodity fetishism, regressive ideas and progressive technology.

Im not interested in VR as a form of trickery or a gimmick. I am a Marxist and a Brechtian. Im interested in the feeling that it instills in you as you experience the vivid yet disembodied world, the sensory overload and deprivation of the medium. I find that academic intellectualism tends to be dry, inaccessible, and emotionally detachedI hope to open up an emotional discussion of cultural theory, iconoclasm, and aesthetics.

At the end of the day all I want is for people to see my work and tell me what they think, because its a conversation starter. Love it or hate it, narrative images are a shared experience, and become points for connection and discussion.

Alonso Nichols (Tufts University photographer and M.F.A. candidate): Its a Question of How We Construct Meaning

There are lots of things that are interesting to me about VR, especially when you put on the goggles and youre immersed in a setting or situation. You lose track of time. You inhabit a world where perspective is twisted and compressed. And that is what VR does really well: it steps away from what is literal.

This capacity to create things that are dreamlike allows you to tap into other senses as you are having this visual experience. In that way, VR can really transport you.

As a student of VR, the class led me to ask the question: what is this tool well suited for? We talk about VR like its the next great thing. I dont know if it is, but for certain things it could really be fascinating. There is a BBC VR documentary where you step off a dive boat and youre underwater, surrounded by ocean life. Its really wonderful.

And there is this idea that VR might be a font of empathy, that you could put a person in someone elses shoes and change that persons perspective. I am not sure its that simple, and there are complex ethical considerations.

VR has the potential to be a disruptor. It has this fresh capacity to ask us to step away from our normal world and way of seeing thing, to ask: what is truthand what do I really understand?

I decided to build a silent film that created a world in which I could explore the question: what do we need to see in order to make sense of something? I thought about how to change the settings of that worldthe buildings, the scenery, lighting, characterswithin the confines of VR, without being overly literal about who, what, where, when, and whywhich is very different from what I do day-to-day.

In my piece, two characters are out in a street and they are looking at each other. You see their expressions and gestures, like a head nod, and then the camera pans out, and you see things that in the first shot are missing. They are no longer there. I was trying to provoke the question: how do we construct a narrative? What do we need to build that story, and what dont we need?

At some point, everything breaks down, the entire set disappears. You could say it is a question of memory, narrative, and how we construct meaning or reality.

Laura Ferguson can be reached at laura.ferguson@tufts.edu.

Excerpt from:

Making a New World in Virtual Reality - Tufts Now

JERUSALEM (JTA) This time of year the convergence of Passover, Easter and Ramadan is peak tourism time for this city. This year is the first time since 1992 that all three festivals fall in the same month.

But traveling as a tourist to Jerusalem right now is impossible: Those flying in would have to self-quarantine in a hotel room for two weeks.

A Jerusalem museum has a possible remedy: a virtual reality tour of holy sites in the famed Old City neighborhood.

The Tower of David Museum has released The Holy City, an immersive VR experience, thats free through April 24, the first day of Ramadan. (The free release began on April 9, the first full day of Passover.)

In collaboration with two VR firms Blimey in Israel and OccupiedVR in Canada the museum through its Innovation Labs 360-degree simulation allows users to walk through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during Easters Holy Fire ceremony; sit among worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan prayers; and stand with the throngs at the Western Wall as they receive the ancient priestly blessing at Passover.

The coronavirus notwithstanding, the project also gives individuals the opportunity to experience holy sites in simulation even if their faith, gender or physical abilities would prevent them from doing so in real life.

One user recalled visiting Israel in 2013.

We experienced the most beautiful religious celebrations, Fatima Lemus Lipton said. This documentary brought us back to that day. What a joy to have seen it.

Jenny Nathan, another user stranded in the U.S. by the coronavirus, said the experience was a welcome blessing on [her] Easter Sunday.

The initial viewings have evoked strong reactions, according to Caroline Shapiro, the Tower of David Museums director of international public relations.

We have people crying, we have people with goosebumps, she said. Just because it is going into these incredible places at these significant times, and experiencing them, which is obviously very, very special.

The Holy City brings users inside multiple houses of worship, including the Cathedral of St. James in Jerusalems Armenian Quarter. (Nimrod Shanit/Blimey)

The Old City is a one square kilometer (slightly more than a third of a square mile) walled area within the modern city of Jerusalem. Tourists, vendors, pilgrims and religious students typically crowd its narrow, cobblestone streets.

The area is home to many sites of key religious importance, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock for Muslims, and the Temple Mount and Western Wall for Jews.

Before the COVID-19 crisis, the museum was planning to use the product only in house for visitors. But now Shapiro says tens of thousands have used it online.

The experience requires a team of two one person wears the VR glasses and the other has a tablet. It starts with a two-minute journey through Jerusalem history played in a room where the user can walk around a miniature model of the Old City and explore it up close.

In the museum, the simulation also features a quest and adventure game, which has the teams working together to solve challenges and find clues leading them from site to site.

The online version is compatible with VR headsets or computer monitors. It preserves the 360-degree immersive experience but does not include the interactive game play components.

It should have been a huge pilgrimage year,Shapiro said. Were hoping that well be able to bring a little bit of Jerusalem to different people all over the world that arent able to make it here.

The 3-D spaces were created by stitching together hundreds of thousands of photos captured on high-resolution cameras.

Walking around Jerusalem with a camera that looks like a bomb and has little resemblance to a regular camera was not easy, said Nimrod Shanit, the director and producer of The Holy City. Once we got past this first hurdle, we were faced with the challenge of filming the gates to the city and the holy sites when no one was about. The team would wake up at 3 a.m. and wait for the first light, waiting for the night workers to head home, then capturing as quickly as possible while the sites were clear.

The Tower of David is just one of the many museums adapting to the COVID-19 crisis and offering free online content. Institutions ranging from the Vatican Museums, to New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the Smithsonian, to the Louvre and beyond are all temporarily shuttered.

This Holy City view features the inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. (Nimrod Shanit/Blimey)

Using the hashtag #MuseumFromHome, cultural institutions worldwide have shared posts on Instagram about ways to experience their collections from the comfort of their own living room sofa. For example, Google has partnered with over 500 museums and galleries to allow users to browse featured collections and use the tech firms interior Street View to wander gallery halls.

Israel remains under a semi-complete shutdown because of the coronavirus. The government has banned group prayer, with an exception for the Western Wall, where a group of 10 men, or minyan, pray three times a day. This year, the traditional Passover priestly blessing was performed with only 10 worshippers present, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

Last year I was among 100,000; this year, unfortunately, far less. I will pray that the world is spared further illness or sorrow from COVID-19 or otherwise, Friedman wrote on Twitter.

On Saturday, the day before Easter for Orthodox Christians, the Holy Fire ceremony will be similarly limited to 10 Eastern Orthodox religious leaders. Usually the holy flame is shared candle to candle by thousands of worshippers and then sent to Orthodox Christian communities around the globe through special flights.

Shapiro said the role of virtual reality experiences like The Holy City may be more important now than ever.

You are not a viewer on it. You are part of it, she said. And I think particularly right now, when were all being told to separate from people, and to be far from people, VR is going to have a very positive impact. It allows you to feel like you are actually amongst people.

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Jerusalem's Old City, virtual reality edition: A game brings quarantined people around the world into the holy neighborhood - JTA News

Recently Sensorium Corp announced the launch of the project - the Sensorium virtual spaceship, and its crew, was launched into space on a nine month journey. The spaceship will deliver the first ever virtual crew into the Sensorium Galaxy star systems. The first planet they will reach, open to exploration, is the Planet of Music created in partnership with Jann Pissenem.

Today's partnership announcement underscores Sensorium's commitment to providing users with the ultimate in virtual reality electronic music and nightlife experiences via 3D social virtual reality. Pissenem is dedicated to bringing his unique skills and expertise to ensure the best virtual reality clubbing experience possible is available on the Sensorium platform.

Brian Kean, Chief Communication Officer Sensorium Corporation, says: "Pissenem is one of the key figures to have shaped the world's modern clubbing landscape and today over three million people a year are attracted to his projects in Ibiza. He has been instrumental in turning Ibiza into the iconic destination for night clubbers from all over the world. His Ushuaa Ibiza and H Ibiza venues have also become the house residences for some of the most famous DJs on the planet, including David Guetta, Calvin Harris and Martin Garrix. Both venues have been recognized as the World's Best Club for the last three years by the International Nightlife Association, as well as some of the world's most recognizable club brands.

With Sensorium Galaxy, electronic music fans who can't always take the trip to Ibiza can now enjoy what this thriving nightclub scene has to offer and their experience will not be limited by physical boundaries thanks to Sensorium's virtual reality. They can drop right into a throbbing electronic club scene and interact with friends as if in the real world."

As part of the partnership, Pissenem is bringing on board ten of the world's top electronic music artists and DJs to collaborate with Sensorium Galaxy.

Yann Pissenem said: "I've always enjoyed being deeply involved in new developments for the nightlife industry. As the Ibiza club scene, where much of my energy has been channelled over the years, is now at the global forefront of electronic music and clubbing, having the opportunity to fuse this world with Sensorium Galaxy to create a new social virtual reality is electrifying.

This is a great opportunity to bring the best of the global club scene to millions of users around the world. Social virtual reality is a step-change in the evolution of communication between people and it's incredible to be actively involved in helping to drive this radical change in how we interact with each other forward".

In addition to the partnership with Yann Pissenem, Sensorium Corporation has today also revealed that its World of Electronic Music's visual design was conceptualized by the acclaimed London-based creative and production studio High Scream, run by visionary French creative Romain Pissenem, brother of Yann. Legendary brothers have an extensive track record of working together on high profile projects.

High Scream has vast project experience in creating some of the biggest entertainment and commercial productions of the last decade with the likes of Disney, Nike, Coca-Cola, Burberry, and some of the biggest names in dance music such as David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia and Martin Garrix. High Scream is also responsible for creating the iconic stage designs and shows at H Ibiza and Ushuaa Ibiza.

About Sensorium Galaxy

Sensorium Corporation, together with strategic partner Redpill VR, is currently developing the Sensorium Galaxy social virtual reality platform which enables the seamless broadcast of synchronized virtual reality content to users all around the globe. This platform signals a radical change in the way users can experience virtual reality, moving beyond its previously solitary nature. Sensorium Galaxy enables users to interact with each other as events are either live-streamed or accessed from a library. Sensorium Galaxy also signals an evolution of social networks, with users not confined to one-dimensional platforms, but able to engage and interact with friends and other users in a virtual environment. Sensorium Galaxy will be comprised of themed planets that present users with different options for social interaction.

About Sensorium Corporation

Sensorium Corporation is a technology company that creates digital simulations of real-world venues and virtual worlds in cooperation with its content partners - globally recognized concert venues, clubs and festivals. Investment in the project to date is approximately $70 million, and it has come from a group of EU companies in both the gaming and entertainment industries.

For more information, visitsensoriumxr.com

About The Night League

Founded in 2001 by events entrepreneur Yann Pissenem, The Night League is a 360 music and entertainment company, dedicated to every facet of event and venue management. For almost two decades, we have created and delivered world-class music experiences through our globally-renowned in-house brands Ushuaa Ibiza, H Ibiza, ANTS and Children of the 80's, as well as collaborating with some of the world's most influential artists, festivals and events to create bespoke and pioneering concepts. From our event producers, venue operators, booking managers, artist management, marketing and design teams, TNL consistently goes beyond expectations, fusing music and art to deliver profound experiences that invigorate audiences around the world.

http://www.thenightleague.com

SOURCE Sensorium Corporation

http://sensoriumxr.com

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Sensorium Galaxy Building the Mecca of Electronic Dance Music in Virtual Reality with the Creators of World-famous Ushuaa Ibiza and H Ibiza Nightclubs...

The world has very few devices left to fight COVID-19 with, but technology remains one of them. Whether it is the employ of state-of-the-art technology in the discovery of cures or vaccines, or traditional technology services to enhance health care and consultations, or even tools that keep people at home occupied/productive, it is clear that technology will serve humanity at one of its darkest moments. The pandemic has contributed, in no small measure, to the understanding of the myriad ways in which available technologies have not been put to better use, and presented people with multiple opportunities to harness these devices, techniques and methods to get on with life in the time of lockdown. Among the primary uses is telemedicine, rendered inexorable now, by the temporary paralysis brought on by a freeze on movement.

The Centres recent guidelines allowing for widespread use of telemedicine services came as a shot in the arm for telehealth crusaders in the country, among them the Telemedicine Society of India that has long been battling to use the technology in its complete arc to reach remote areas in India. This move finds consonance with the rest of the world where several nations, also deeply impacted by the pandemic, have deployed telemedicine to reach people who have been unable to come to hospital, to reduce footfalls in hospitals, and to even provide medical and mental health counselling to countless people. It was way back in 2000 that telemedicine was first employed in India, but the progress has been excruciatingly slow, until the pandemic. However, it does seem as if the medical community was only held back by the lack of legislation to enable tele consultations. For no sooner was the policy announced, than hospitals and clinicians hurried to jump onto the bandwagon, advertising contact information for patients. The advantages are peculiar in the current context, when putting distance between people is paramount, as tele consultations are not barred even when health care professionals and patients may have to be quarantined. The advancement of telecommunication capabilities over the years has made the transmission of images and sound files (heart and lung sounds, coughs) faster and simpler. Pilot telemedicine experiments in ophthalmology and psychiatry have proven to be of immense benefit to the communities. Telemedicines time is here, finally. While unleashing the full potential of telemedicine to help people, experts and government agencies must be mindful of the possible inadequacies of the medium, and securing sensitive medical information; such cognisance should guide the use of the technology.

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Virtual reality: On telemedicine - The Hindu

Dublin, April 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Human-Robot Cooperation Market: Cloud Robotics, DigitalTwins, Teleoperation, and Virtual Reality 2020 - 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The convergence of cloud robotics, digital twin technology, teleoperation, and virtual reality will enable a level of human-to-robot collaboration. This research evaluates each of these technologies and solutions including their use in next-generation robotics and automation.

This research assesses the cloud robotics market including technologies, companies, strategies, use cases, and solutions. The report provides global and regional forecasts for cloud robotics apps, services, and components. Forecasts include the market outlook for cloud services support of cloud robotics including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Robotics as a Service (RaaS). Forecasting for cloud robotics by robot type and deployment model is also included covering Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Community Cloud.

This research also evaluates the emerging role of teleoperation and telerobotics in the era of Industry 4.0. The report analyzes the impact of teleoperation and telerobotics solutions in different industry verticals and technology sectors. It also provides market forecasts for IIoT teleoperation and telerobotics systems, services, and solutions. It also evaluates the role of digital twin technology in teleoperation and telerobotics.

This research also evaluates digital twinning technology, solutions, use cases, and leading company efforts in terms of R&D and early deployments. It assesses the digital twin product and service ecosystem including application development and operations. The research also analyzes technologies supporting and benefiting from digital twinning. It also provides detailed forecasts covering digital twinning solutions in many market segments and use cases including manufacturing simulations, predictive analytics, and more.

This research also provides an in-depth assessment of the virtual reality market including analysis of VR ecosystem and role of value chain partners, evaluation of recent VR patent filings and intellectual property, and analysis of current price metrics VR devices, apps, and content. It provides an assessment of key VR companies and solutions with SWOT analysis, analysis of emerging business models and evolution of VR monetization, analysis of VR component market: devices, software, hardware, platforms. It also presents key VR growth drivers, market challenges, and emerging opportunities.

Cloud robotics is distinguished from the general field of electromechanical automation through its use of teleoperation as well as reliance upon various cloud computing technologies such as computing and storage as well as the emerging cloud-based business models enabling robotics-as-a-service. In addition, cloud robotics will benefit greatly from edge computing technologies, such as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), as well as commercial introduction of 5G New Radio (5GNR) technologies based on millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies.

Teleoperation represents the ability to operate equipment or a machine from a distance. A specific form of teleoperation involving remote control of a robot from a distance is referred to as telerobotics. Teleoperation and telerobotics are both supported by ICT infrastructure including broadband communications, sensors, machine to machine (M2M) communications, and various Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

A digital twin is comprised of a virtual object representation of a real-world item in which the virtual is mapped to physical things in the real-world such as equipment, robots, or virtually any connected business asset. This mapping in the digital world is facilitated by IoT platforms and software that is leveraged to create a digital representation of the physical asset. The digital twin of a physical asset can provide data about its status such as its physical state and disposition.

Conversely, a digital object may be used to manipulate and control a real-world asset by way of teleoperation. The publisher of this report sees this form of cyber-physical connectivity, signaling, and control as a key capability to realize the vision for Industry 4.0 to fully digitize production, servitization, and the "as a service" model for products.

Virtual Reality (VR) technology and applications will undergo a substantial transformation during the pre-5G era, leading to mass adoption of full-featured, mobile supported, and fully immersive VR technologies in post-5G era starting 2020 (along with the commercial deployment of 5G). 5G is expected to reduce network latency significantly, which will enable many previously tethered-only applications and services such as streaming remote robotic controls and teleoperation via haptic or tactile communications, and 360-degree virtual reality-based user interfaces and controls.

Target Audience:

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Key Topics Covered:

Cloud Robotics Market by Technology, Robot Type, Hardware, Software, Services, Infrastructure and Cloud Deployment Types, and Industry Verticals

Teleoperation and Telerobotics: Technologies and Solutions for Enterprise and Industrial Automation

Digital Twins Market by Technology, Solution, Application, and Industry Vertical

Virtual Reality Market by Segment (Consumer, Enterprise, Industrial, Government), Equipment (Hardware, Software, Components) Applications and Solutions

Companies Mentioned

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2020 Global Insights into Cloud Robotics, DigitalTwins, Teleoperation and Virtual Reality to 2025 - GlobeNewswire