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Last Updated: Friday, 17 June, 2005, 08:26 GMT 09:26 UK
'Teleporting' over the internet
Animator Nick Park with claymation model of Wallace, from Wallace And Gromit
Dr Mowry was inspired by Aardman Animation's Wallace And Gromit







Special suit

Fans of science fiction have long been interested in the idea of teleportation - where an object, or even a human being, is transported from one location to another instantaneously.

Professor Goldstein has envisioned that, eventually, the objects will be built with "nano-dust" - tiny objects that can be programmed to bind to each other and move - but currently they are trying to build at a much larger scale, working with objects the size of table-tennis balls.

Their original plan was for the application to work in face-to-face interaction.

Model of Gollum from Lord Of The Rings
The technology mirrors that used to create the character of Gollum
"I'm in Pittsburgh, and you're in London. How do we make that happen?" Dr Mowry said.

"We can't teleport somebody - nobody's going to travel anywhere - but if we're in our own rooms a system of cameras will capture exactly what's in each room."

He said that these cameras would work much the same way as the character of Gollum was created by capturing the movements of actor Andy Serkis in the Lord Of The Rings films.

Mr Serkis wore a special suit and the cameras were able to interpret his movements.

"That information is turned into some representation - a three-dimensional version of an mpeg [computer video file] - like a DVD," Dr Mowry added.

"You capture it digitally, ship it over across the network, and then reproduce a physical object that looks just like the original object, and moves just like it."

And he stressed this would be useful for much more than simple video conferencing.

"It's very artificial to talk to somebody through a glass wall, which is effectively what you have when you have a screen," he added.

"You want to forget the fact that you're in different rooms."

Teleportation goes long distance
18 Aug 04 |  Science/Nature
Teleportation breakthrough made
16 Jun 04 |  Science/Nature
Q&A: Teleportation
14 Jun 04 |  Science/Nature



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