"Restart Europe": Holoportation – Virtual Communication at a Higher Level

22.0.2021



Scientists at the Technical University are working on a project for visual teleportation, thanks to which in the near future people will be able to communicate via a three-dimensional hologram over long distances. Assoc. Prof. Agata Manolova from the Faculty of Telecommunications at the university and project leader explained that so-called holoporation is a new type of 3D recording technology. In this way, high-quality three-dimensional models of people can be constructed and transmitted around the world in real time. This virtual teleportation is carried out with special software and video cameras, and the interlocutor can appear before us as an avatar. "Holoporation is communication in mixed reality, in which different people participate, who communicate absolutely realistically regardless of where they are located in the world. The idea is that we present people as an absolutely realistic avatar that reacts in the same way as the real user, moves, has facial expression. In future development, we will include other human perceptions such as touch, taste, and smell," said Assoc. Prof. Manolova. The application area of holoporation can be very diverse - in medicine, in education and generally in improving the quality of life, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project leader clarified: "After communicating with colleagues from other scientific fields, we saw that there could be many interesting applications regarding training, including training of specialists in medicine, training in situations such as fires, earthquakes, i.e., mixed training and simulations can be conducted in virtual environments. In principle, no one expected COVID-19 to hit us in the way things happened, but science moves exactly from such challenges, so this helped to some extent with another idea to support education, because at the moment so much interest has gathered around this project and in the laboratory here work very many students who have a great interest in these new technologies". The project is called "HOLOTWIN" and is part of the national program "European Scientific Networks" under the Ministry of Education and Science. The project began in October 2020. It lasts for 2 years and is implemented jointly with the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in Surrey, United Kingdom, with partners from Greece and other world scientists.

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Vnr.bg, 22.09.2021