What is holoportation?

If there is a TV series that has made several generations dream about the future for decades, there is little debate as to which title deserves the gold medal in this regard: Star Trek. Conceived by the brilliant and somewhat eccentric Eugene ‘Gene’ Roddenberry, it debuted with the classic series (the only one at the time, of course) in 1966, when the space race was in its heyday. with considerable advances in relation to computers and many other technologies.

Some of the futuristic technologies that the series showed in the 1960s are part of our daily lives today, but others, more than half a century later, are still far from our reach. The main one is undoubtedly the warp engine, a key element for space exploration as suggested by the series, but probably not the most desired by many. The most “remembered” catchphrase of the series (and I’m putting the remembered one in quotes, because strangely it was never spoken) is Beam me up, Scotty, with which the expedition members asked the Enterprise’s chief engineer to teleport them. from Back to NCC-1701. So yes, we are talking about teleportation.

Teleportation or, more precisely, teleportation of atoms and even more structures composed of them, It is not yet in sight in the short or medium term, and there are quite a few qualified voices who say it will never be possible. Personally, I think those last ones are spoilers, but on the other hand, it’s pretty clear to me that it’s something that, if it works out, will be so long-term that I won’t see it, and I bet you won’t either ( wow, now I spoiler me).

So to the high teleporter, what we can believe is holoportation. Not the same, I know, but the fact that I can’t eat a good Kobe beef tenderloin (no longer wagyu, I’m talking about having a Kobe certificate of origin) doesn’t detract from a good cut of Galician beef. from the Sierra del Guadarrana or some juicy Argentinian specialty. If my atoms can’t be teleported, at least my presence can be holoported.

What is holoportation?

It’s likely that just with its name alone, or in any case with its title and the previous paragraphs, you’ve already got an idea, especially since it’s not an overly new technology. We already told you about it in 2016, and due to its potential, its investigation has not stopped since then. Y The year 2022 is proving to be extremely important in this regardwith successful attempts expanding its reach.

in a summarized way, holoportation proposes holographic reproduction in real time and at a distance signal captured by a camera specially designed for this purpose at one end and an optical system capable of holographically reconstructing the image captured by the camera. If two (or more) conversational participants have both elements, they will be able to interact with each other as if they were both in the same place. And yes, it may sound like something simple to put it this way, but we’re actually talking about a particularly complex technique and process.

And why do I say that this year 2022 is a great year for holoportation? Well, because two very interesting milestones happened a few months apart. The first one took place last April when NASA used Microsoft’s Hololens Konnect camera with customized software developed by AEXA Aerospace to project holograms of a group of people onto the International Space Station.

With this test, the US space agency began experimenting with technology that in the future they could be used in connection with missions to the Moon, Mars and other places to communicate with astronauts, relay critical information and alleviate the feeling of isolation in space. It will also enable two-way communication, allowing astronauts to holoport to Earth and communicate with loved ones and others.

On the other hand, today we learned about another successful test and that, moreover, in this case it was two-way and between two countries. As we can see in this video, researchers from Western University in Ontario, Canada have established a successful two-way connection with Alabama in the United States. Those responsible believe this to be the first international two-way holoportation that has occurred.

talking heads

Holoportation is today the most advanced technique for “teleporting” a personBut it’s not the only one, of course. In fact, who knows if it was also inspired by Star Trek teleportation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) began a research project in the mid-1970s to find some kind of secure system that would allow the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, in an emergency , the chief justice and the White House spokesman could meet, even though they are in different places.

ARPA, later DARPA by adding defense to its previous name, already in 1969 it designed and launched an intelligent telematics network, capable of automatically redirecting data traffic if any segment of it stops working. In the first phase of its deployment, it connected the University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute, but soon new nodes were added. This network was called ARPANET, and as you probably already know, it was the backbone of the Internet until 1990, after the transition to the TCP/IP protocol model that began in 1983 was completed.

In Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte recalls that he was hired for a remote teleconferencing system project and that to add realism to the “telepresence” in which they had to work, they figured they would build some replicas of the heads of each of those people. This would have a life-sized translucent mask in the shape of the person’s face. In said mask, images of people would be projected and in addition the head would be able to perform some basic movements. Each of the five people mentioned above would have a “set” of four talking heads and the necessary pickup system to send their signal to the other four.

In the end, the project was not approved, but the current advances in teleportation are clear evidence for me that Negroponte and his team have moved in the right direction and taken the first steps in the concept of telepresence.