Decentralized virtual reality: making the move to multi-user- and multi-screen virtual worlds

The aim of the development of virtual reality (VR) for automation is to provide the framework for projective virtual reality which allows users to "project" their actions in the virtual world into the real world using robots and other means of automation. The framework is based on a task-oriented approach which builds on the "task deduction" capabilities of a VR system and a task planning component. Robots far from the control station can be controlled as easily as robots near it. This paves the way for a new quality of user-friendly man-machine interfaces for automation applications. This work has been enhanced by a new structure that allows to distribute the VR application over multiple computers. With this new step, it is now possible for multiple users to work together in the same virtual room, using only an Internet or ISDN connection. The distribution technology has been further developed to run the virtual world on many synchronized PC so that a panorama projection or even a cave can be run with 10 PC instead of high-end workstations, thus cutting down the costs for such a visualization environment drastically and allowing for a new range of applications.