Musings on Telepresence and Virtual Presence

“The sense of telepresence is enhanced by vividness and interactivity.(24)”

“We use the usual notion of presence, the feeling of “being” in the virtual environment (Heeter, 1992; Sheridan, 1992). specification methods to support multiple views.”

“Presence is the participant’s sense of being there in the virtual environment [27] and copresence is the feeling of being there together [25] [26], a sense of others in the same place.”

“Hence, postural movements seem to be an interesting indicator of presence, as reported by other authors (Cohn, DiZio, & Lackner, 2000; Held & Durlach, 1993; Prothero, Parker, Furness, & Wells, 1995; Sheridan, 1992; Slater, Usoh, & Steed, 1995).”

“In their pioneering work, Short et al. (1976) conceptualised social presence as a way to analyse mediated communications.”

“…as telepresence by Marvin Minsky about teleoperations and the control of remote robots (Minsky, 1980), presence later translated to describe the feeling and belief of being present in a virtual world (Held and Durlach, 1992; Sheridan, 1992; Slater and Usoh, 1993; Steuer, 1992; Zeltzer, 1992).”

“1995; but see Robinett 1992; Sheridan 1992), although the increasingly more realistic displays can eventually result in one feeling complete immersion and presence (Naimark 1991).”

“Scholars agree that objective measures of presence are provide less depth in understanding the experience of the user, and measuring presence by asking users to describe their experience subjectively is typically more useful [23, 39].”

“In addition, presence is a conscious experience with a highly selective and internalized interpretation of the environment (Schubert et al., 2001), and it has been pointed out that the sense of presence may be a manifold experience (Sheridan, 1992; Biocca and Delaney, 1995; Schubert et al., 2001).”

“This confusion stems from the two realities created by the telepresence system (Sheridan, 1992; Steuer, 1992).”

“Sheridan (1992) referred for the fi rst time to spatial presence - not a real place but a virtual presence - as “ feeling like you are present in the environment generated by the computer ” (Sheridan, 1992).”

“In the community of VR and AR, presence refers to the sense of ‘being there’ [25, 26, 41, 63, 68], and engagement is considered as a determinant of presence [35, 39, 60, 67, 76].”

“Presence is the ‘sense of being’ in a virtual space [Sheridan 1992] and ownership is the illusion of owning a virtual limb or virtual body [Slater et al. 2008].”

“For virtual environments (VE), presence was described as a "sense of being physically present with visual, auditory, or force displays generated by a computer" [69, p. 120].”

“Sheridan (1992) proposed three determinants of media form: the extent of sensory information (or immersion ) of users in the media environment, the amount of control by the user of the sensor mechanisms of the environment, and the ability of users to modify or interact with the environment.”

“…linked to the characteristics of the system and the virtual task (the physical sensation of being in a virtual world), while presence involves a more subjective aspect relating to the perceptions and characteristics of the user (involvement and activation resulting from activity) [10,11].”

“More generally, a long-standing theme in the evaluation of VR experiences has been the concept of presence (the feeling of “being there”) in the place depicted by the VR (Sheridan 1992).”

“The sensorial richness of multimodal systems translates into a more complete and coherent experience of the virtual scenario and therefore the sense of being present inside of this VE is stronger (Held & Durlach (1992); Sheridan (1992); Witmer & Singer (1998)).”

“…as ducking when a 3D object is thrown at the user (Held & Durlach, 1992), social responses such as greeting/shaking hands with a virtual character (Sheridan, 1992), or reactions when exposed to a conflict between real cues (inertial rotation) and virtual stimuli (visual oscillation; Prothero,…”

“Indeed, it seems likely that haptic interfaces will become more and more essential as computer interfaces evolve and one day become as commonplace as today’s visual and audio interfaces [ 3 ].”

“Particularly for functions such as telepresence and virtual presence, the demand for communication with haptic information is on the rise, and the haptic interface will become essential as computer interfaces evolve and technology moves beyond mere visual and audio interfaces [12].”

“In this vision physical presence accompanies subjective presence, consisting of the perception of being located in the same physical space in which a certain event happens, a certain process takes place, or a certain person stands [ 10 ,11 ].”

“We agree, however, with Sheridan who states that presence is an extremely subjective sensation, and not amenable to objective physiological definition and measurement[ 12 ].”

“Sensorimotor immersion is characterized by three features: the extent of sensory data, the control of sensors, and the ability to modify the environment (Sheridan, 1992).”

“Presence has been formalized as the sense of ‘being there’ in the situation and events depicted in the VR [13-15], and correspondingly the tendency to respond as if the situation were real [16].”

“This typically leads to the illusion of being in the virtual world, usually referred to as presence (Sanchez-Vives and Slater (2005); Sheridan (1992); Slater (2009)).”

“Several researchers have found that presence is generally regarded as a vital component of VEs for users to experience and interact with good sense in real time [17, 19 ].”

“We also are so pleased to acknowledge that this doctoral study and research is financed by UPM's Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF).”

“In order to enhance user’s immersion, embodiment and presence [1][2][3], we need to support a natural consistency between the vestibular and proprioceptive feedback in addition to the visual feedback, while enabling a precise tracking of body”

“Several researchers have constructed categorizations of these factors 25,26 ; however, prior studies have all approached presence a variety of ways with a variety of definitions Banos et al. 17 approached Presence as being determined determined by media characteristics and user characteristics.”

“reality systems that contribute to providing a sense of presence [3, 14–16].”

“Despite a number of different definitions and models of presence, it is generally accepted that the three aspects just mentioned are important in promoting it: sensory fidelity and richness, degrees of interactivity, and other psychological cues such as content consistency, situation awareness, distraction factors, an…”

“Second, the presence theory places a strong emphasis on a psychological feeling of ‘ being there ’ (Sheridan, 1992), and prior research has revealed that environmental stimuli (such as vividness and mental imagery, for example) could impact how presence is formed.”

““Telepresence” is also known as virtual presence [33], and it was originally proposed by researchers in the fields of engineering and computer science.”

“The discrimination accuracy [2] between the real and virtual environments may show the state that one perceives the environment.”

“In the study outlined below, we focus on subjective measures because the sensation of presence is in the first place of a subjective experience (Sheridan 1992).”

“Especially for functions like telepresence and virtual presence, the demand for communication with haptic information is on the rise, and the haptic interface certainly will become essential as computer interfaces evolve and technology moves beyond mere visual and audio interfaces (Sheridan, 1992).”

“Held and Durlach [9], and Sheridan [10] note that we don’t have a working measure of presence.”

“For example, the degree of one’s interaction with and control over a task, one’s ability to modify physical objects in VE, environmental richness, multimodal presentation, the meaningfulness of the experience, scene realism, and the consistency of information with the objective world have all been found to affect the…”

“Similarly, perceptions of job security, the presence of a union and organizational tenure are all associated with a reduction in employees quitting (Arnold & Feldman, 1982; Baysinger & Mobley, 1983; Cotton & Tuttle, 1986; Sheridan, 1992).”

“Telecopresence needs to be distinguished from telepresence, which has been commonly defined as the experience of being physically present at a remote location (Held & Durlach, 1992; Sheridan, 1992).”

“However, it is not always the sense of presence that is vital to communication, but also having sufficient information in the appropriate format and the ability to properly process it [65].”

“Presence is often subdivided into other related terms (physical, telepresence, and virtual) designed to describe an individual’s experience (Lee, 2004; Ma & Nickerson, 2006; Sheridan, 1992).”

“…(see Biocca, 1997; Heeter, 1992; Held & Durlach, 1992; Lee, 2004; Lessiter, Freeman, Keogh, & Davidoff, 2001; Lombard & Ditton, 1997; Loomis, 1992; Sheridan, 1992; Skarbez, Brooks, & Whitton, 2017; Slater, 2009; Slater, Usoh, & Steed, 1994; Slater & Wilbur, 1997; Steuer, 1992; Witmer & Singer,…”

“A commonly accepted definition of this concept indicates that presence is the subjective experience of being in one place, even when you are physically located in another (Sadowski and Stanney 2002; Sheridan 1992; Slater and Wilbur 1997; Baños et al. 2005).”

“Enlarging screen size increases the amount of sensory information for media users.(12) A larger display size is likely to attract more visual field by providing more pictures that can be seen in the perimeter of vision.”

“Requirements to enhance user’s immersion and sense of presence in teleoperation systems, includes motion and wholebody based interactions [3][4][5].”

“For example, previous scholars (Biocca & Delany, 1995; Heeter, 1992; Lombard & Ditton, 1997; Sheridan, 1992; Steuer, 1992) assert that interactivity and vividness may represent the main antecedents of virtual reality experience.”

“The number of sensory modalities through which the user is coupled to the VE is a main factor contributing to the feeling of presence (Sheridan 1992).”

“Most discussions of presence in virtual environments are about its quality— degrees of resolution and interactivity (Held & Durlach, 1992; Sheridan, 1992; Sheridan, 1997).”

“This is generally referred to as “presence,” the illusion of being in the place depicted by the VR system (Held & Durlach, 1992; Sanchez-Vives & Slater, 2005; Sheridan, 1992).”

“Providing a sense of presence, described as the awareness a user has of being in a computer-generated environment [ 60 ] and having “an external space beyond the limits of the sensory organs themselves” [63], is also particularly challenging in a two-dimensional online environment [23, 31].”