Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.
Enhance the remote transfer of sensorimotor experience through telerobotics and telepresence by additionally using a sensory deprivation tank. The person lies in the tank throughout the process of virtual embodiment. This is an example of the experience I'm aiming to enhance.
Why?
Sensory deprivation of natural stimuli makes the experience created by virtual stimuli feel more real and more immersive .
VR in sensory deprivation tanks has been tried, but not virtual embodiment which involves the transfer of sensorimotor experience by using a remotely-controlled robotic body. This would give a way more realistic experience since the sensory input would come from the real world and the means to control the robotic body would contribute to the feeling of being present in that body.
People who have all or most of their body paralyzed or to whom bionic limbs won't help for any other reason could engage in such immersive experiences regularly. This might make one feel like they have an alternative body that they can use to walk around, touch objects and interact with people and their surroundings in ways they can't with their natural body.
Realistic virtual embodiment experience is important for the quality of remote work tasks performed through telerobotics .
In a more distant future the artificial, android body could be made very realistic and similar to a natural human body, this would lead to a super immersive experience of virtual embodiment or consciousness transfer.
How it works:
The sensory-deprived virtual embodiment can be broken down into a few major components:
Vision: live visual input is streamed from HD cameras in a remote (or close) location to a waterproof VR headset that the person wears. The cameras are the eyes of the robotic body that the person "embodies". Eye trackers could also be installed in the headset to track the movements of a person's eyes and use this to control the movement of the robotic eyes accordingly.
Hearing: use high quality, waterproof earphones or headphones on one end and microphones live-streaming sounds to them on the other. A person could also speak into a microphone to communicate through the robotic avatar.
Sense of touch and control of the robotic body parts:
Since a person lying in an SD tank can't move their body much and even if they did, it would negatively affect sensory deprivation, it would be best to use various brain-computer interfaces to control the robotic body directly with neural signals (thoughts). Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces enabling to remotely control robotic limbs are already pretty well developed and will only improve with time.
People who have invasive brain implants could make even better use of this since it would enable more efficient and precise control of the robotic body as well as enable direct transfer of the haptic sense to the CNS.
Apart from or in addition to the invasive implants, the best way to transfer the haptic sense to a person who lies in an SD tank would be to use a full-body waterproof haptic suit. Teslasuit seems by far the most advanced tool when it comes to full-body haptic feedback.
Initially all the above would be enough, in the future, the sense of smell and maybe even taste could also be added.
To transfer all the sensorimotor data between the person and their robotic avatar you'd have to use either well-insulated wires to protect the connections from the salty water used in SD tanks or wireless connections like Bluetooth and wifi. In any case, high-speed data connectivity is crucial in this to make the experience lag-free.
[1]Slater M, Wilbur S (1997) A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): Speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments
Povilas S Dec 20, 2022