The Museum Informatics Project at UC Berkeley would like to
announce the  World Wide Web Telerobotic Remote Environment Browser.
This robotic device allows internet users on the WWW an
opportunity to view museum objects/specimens in online exhibits.

The URL is http://vive.cs.berkeley.edu/capek/

The developers are:
Eric Paulos http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~paulos/
and John Canny http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jfc/
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776

An abstract  and introduction describing the project from a paper titled
A world Wide Web Telerobotic Remote Environment Browser
by Paulos and Canny follows.

Thanks,
Natalie
___________________________________________________________
Natalie K. Munn                 [log in to unmask]
Museum Informatics Project      (510) 642-5306 W
UC Berkeley
378 Doe Library Annex           MIP Phone (510) 642-6533
Berkeley, CA 94720-6200         MIP Fax   (510) 643-8856
___________________________________________________________

Abstract:
Robots provide us with a means to move around in, visualize, and
interact with a remote physical world. We have exploited these
physical properties coupled with the growing diversity of users on the
World Wide Web (WWW) to create a WWW based
active telerobotic remote environment browser.  This browser, called
Mechanical Gaze, allows multiple remote WWW users to actively control
up to six degrees of freedom (DOF) of a robot arm with an attached
camera to explore a real remote environment.  The initial environment
is a collection of physical museum exhibits which WWW users can view
at various positions, orientations, and levels of resolution.

Introduction

We have designed this teleoperated WWW server in order to allow users
throughout the world to visit actual remote spaces and exhibits.  It
also serves as a useful scientific tool by promoting discussion about
the physical specimens in the browser such as insects, live reptiles,
rare museum collections, and recently discovered artifacts.

The use of an on-line controlled camera eliminates many of the
resolution and depth perception problems of libraries of digitized
images. The user has complete control over the viewpoint, and can
experience the exhibit in its state at a particular moment in time,
under the same conditions and lighting as a viewer who is in the
actual space.

In addition, each exhibit has a hypertext page with links to texts
describing the object, other web pages relevant to it, and to comments
left by other users. These pages can be accessed by navigating the
camera in physical space, and centering on a particular object. The
pages can be thought of as mark-ups of 3D objects in the spirit of
VRML but where the objects are actual physical entities in a remote
space rather than simply models.

Exhibits can be added or removed in a matter of a few minutes,
allowing for an extremely dynamic array of objects to be viewed over
the course of only a few months.  Users are encouraged not only to
check back for upcoming exhibits, but to participate themselves.
Users can leave commentary about an item on exhibit, creating dialogue
about the piece, as well as feedback to the owner, artist, or curator
of the object. Institutions, museums, curators, scientists, artists,
and individual users are all invited to exhibit objects in the
browser.