It might look like a scene from Minority Report, but Constantinos Miltiadis’s hi-tech gear is science fact, not fiction. Created for a postgraduate thesis at ETH university, Zurich, and dubbed Project Anywhere, his proof-of-concept kit conjures a truly immersive digital experience using a smartphone-containing mask, “Inteligloves” and Kinect sensors. “The first thing I realised when I tried Oculus Rift was that it’s very believable. In a matter of minutes, in a matter of seconds actually, you lose your connection to reality,” he says. But something was missing, “The first thing I wanted to do was look at my body and look at my hands.” Miltiadis’s setup transports not only your vision but your body to a digital world: while the Kinect sensors track your skeleton, the gloves capture your hand movements. Both feed information, in real time, to a computer which sends it, via the cloud, to the app on your mask-mounted phone. What’s more, both Miltiadis’s headset and gloves are wireless.
But in developing a convincing virtual reality, new conundrums are produced. Among them, Miltiadis is wary of turning his virtual hands to gun-toting games, believing a potent illusion could bring its own dilemmas. “It stops being a game; it is actually a simulation of reality,” he says.
Instead, Miltiadis believes the setup could be used in myriad applications, from “multiplayer” Skype calls in which participants appear to be physically present, to educational offerings such as the creation of a virtual museum. Indeed, Miltiadis envisages a scenario in which “visitors” download an app to their phone, mount the device in the mask and put on the gloves, allowing them to explore displays, pick up and manipulate exhibits and interact with virtual film installations.
“You can do a lot more than you can in a physical space,” he says. It’s a concept that has already gained fans – chief among them is the prospective Museum of Science Fiction in the US, which recently awarded Miltiadis the Arthur C Clarke Award in its International Architectural Design competition in recognition of his ingenious approach.
It’s a futuristic vision yet it’s one that Miltiadis is not alone is pursuing – techies the world over are developing their own versions of full-body immersion. But one thing’s for sure: the virtual is becoming a reality.
Project Anywhere will be presented on 17 January at a TEDx event at National Technical University of Athens.
