We tend to think of telepresence as a way of visiting places where we would like to go, without all the fuss of travelling. However it also offers the opportunity of exploring dangerous environments, such as nuclear or chemical installations, from a safe distance.

The project TELEBORG has developed a telepresence system which allows the user to 'handle' objects in remote environments. Data-gloves or arms with force-feedback sense, 3D virtual-reality helmets with head orientation sensors and active seats with body dynamics monitoring are used to give a visual and tactile illusion of being at the remote site.

The project demonstrated the potential of the technology in two trials. The first involved remotely dismantling a contaminated valve from a nuclear reactor. This is a standard procedure in the nuclear industry ­ some 6,000 such valves are inspected every year in France. The tactile feedback provided by the TELEBORG system made it much easier to control the robot tools and speeded up the task. The second trial involved remote operation of a machine, such as an excavator, in decommissioning a contaminated nuclear fuel processing plant. Once again the tactile feedback and virtual reality images made the operator's task much easier.

TELEBORG's 'high-performance' telepresence system opens up possibilities for blue-collar teleworkers, who have to operate equipment in unpleasant or dangerous working conditions. It also makes it possible to create virtual laboratories, where students or researchers can gain 'hands-on' experience of experiments, which are too dangerous or expensive to conduct in a normal laboratory.