Perceptual Robotics has won a contract with NASA to install interactive cameras to allow mission personnel in separate locations to view and share important information. The new cameras include one at the Astronaut Training Center at Johnson Space Center, and one for viewing a scale model of Hubble at Goddard Space Flight Center.
NASA chose to add the new cameras based on the success of NASA's first Telepresence-powered cameras, put in place to let web users to observe preparations for the upcoming service call on the Hubble Space Telescope.
"These new cameras will provide a potentially useful tool to maximize communication between experts in Texas and Maryland, and possibly, with the astronauts in the shuttle itself," explains Fran Greenman, Director of Marketing at Perceptual Robotics.
"We are thankful to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Johnson Space Center and the Kennedy Space Center for providing us this opportunity to bring Internet technology and space technology together for the millennium," said Greenman.
The new cameras will also be available to the public, as are the original PRI cameras. Web spectators can still watch scientists in the Clean Room at Goddard, home to the Hubble Space Telescope project, prepare for the service mission.
Or, they can examine the shuttle on the launch pad and even view the launch LIVE from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. To access PRI's unique, interactive technology, viewers need only a web-enabled PC — no additional software or plug-ins are required.
Through Telepresence, web users can literally take control — directing the focus, zoom and angle of the live-action cameras to capture unique, personalized shots of the scientists and astronauts in action. The Internet user can even snap exciting live-action images, or LIVEcards, of the activities, and send them instantly via email to friends and family. These recipients of LIVEcards can just double-click the image they get to be linked automatically to the live cameras.
About
Perceptual Robotics is located in Evanston, Ill., and develops and markets internationally recognized Telepresence software products, including Look & Buy e-commerce solutions. PRI's "look where you like" technology lets Internet users look around distant locations by controlling live cameras directly from their web browsers by connecting networks of controllable high- resolution video cameras to the Internet via web servers.
Users around the world can pan, tilt and zoom the cameras through an ordinary browser on their own PCs, without any additional software or plug-ins required. The images received by the users are live still JPEGs, ensuring average file sizes are narrowband friendly and thus accessible even over low-speed modems.
