Title:
New System May Let You Appear Someplace You Have
Never Been
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
A hologram is a three-dimensional image -- an image
that appears to have height, width and depth.More
than thirty years ago, Princess Leia gave her famous
holographic plea for help in the original "Star
Wars" movie. Since then, holograms have become
bigger, better and more widely used. Now,
researchers have developed a holographic
telepresence system. Traditional telepresence
systems are used in video conferencing. They present
two-dimensional images. But the new system might be
able to send a moving 3-D image of a person over
great distances -- and show it in close to real
time. Nasser Peyghambarian is the lead researcher
for the project at the University of Arizona in
Tucson. He says holographic technology can make
people appear in places where they have never been.
With the new system, the image is refreshed so often
that it seems to look like a person's natural
movement. An important part of the system is a
screen that can refresh the holographic image every
two seconds. The screen is made from a special
photorefractive material. In experiments, the
researchers placed sixteen cameras in a half-circle.
They took pictures of people from different
positions. Then the researchers sent the images to a
different place over the Internet. Lasers at the
other end received the pictures and produced
holographs on the screen. Mr. Peyghambarian says the
new material permits the images to be continually
written, erased and replaced. He says: "Every image
that you want to show only takes two seconds to
write it. And therefore the next image comes in
after that. This allows this system to be used for
telepresence -- that an object in one location now
can be transferred or can be shown in another
location in 3-D." He says the more cameras and the
more pictures that are used, the more realistic the
holographic image appears. The researchers imagine
their technology being used for things like 3-D maps
and movies requiring no special glasses. Doctors
could use it for telemedicine. But the researchers
say their holographic telepresence system is still
years away from completion. A report on the system
appeared in the journal Nature. For VOA Special
English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You can learn about
other new uses for 3-D technology at
voaspecialenglish.com. We'll talk more about
telepresence systems next week.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
