Why Holoportation is better than Teleportation

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – Teleportation seems like fun at first, but it gets very annoying. Beam me up, energize, ready for teleportation, these are all punchlines we have heard one too many times. But what if there is a better way to bridge distances without actually having to travel from one place to another?

Presenting HoloLens and its latest application called Holoportation. Let’s see why holoportation is way better than teleportation. First of all, with teleportation you just travel from one place to another. You’re at home, sipping your coffee, and bam, you wake up on the other side of the world. That’s how teleportation works, or rather how it will work if our science guys will be able to pull this one off.

There was actually a successful teleportation experiment, performed in Germany, where a team of scientists managed to beam classical information from one stream of particles to another, using a powerful laser and a quantum property called entanglement.

Well, it would seem that the guys from Microsoft managed to pull off a much cooler experiment. Using the AR-device and a new technology called Interactive 3D Technology, the wearer of the headband, can teleport anywhere in the world and even interact with his or hers environment and even with other persons.

But, don’t think that you’ll be able to strap on the headband and head to Mars. Although its sound pretty amazing, the technology still has a couple of limitation. First of all, a special environment is needed to perform the holoportation experiment.

Dozens of cameras, affixed all over the chamber, record, in real-time, the participants, every movement, and translates the information into a digital signal that, in turn, is processed by a computer. Basically, the computer creates an alter-ego, which can be transmitted to anywhere in the world, provided that the location has similar equipment.

When the user puts the headgear on, it can see and hear the other person who is wearing a similar gear. Moreover, the movements seem to be so fluid, that the wearer actually thinks that the other person is next to him or her.

Shahram Izadi, the leading researcher at Microsoft’s AR department, posted a clip on YouTube, in which he demonstrated the potential of the new system. And might we say that it’s pretty darn amazing. In the 4-minute long clip, the researcher explained the holoportation technique with the help of his daughter and Sergio.

All in all, the new technology looks and feels pretty fantastic, and, according to Microsoft, AR-based technologies will be more sought than VR.

Photo credits:flickr