People enjoy getting together to interact, share, and work together. Being together has never felt more crucial than it does now, given the limited travel and increased remote work over the previous year. hologram video call

To solve this challenge, Google has been working for a few years on a technology project that combines advances in hardware and software to enable friends, families and coworkers to feel together, even when they’re cities (or countries) apart. It could be the solution of the future for remote meetings and video calls believe Google, which has been testing the technology and will now continue to do so in the offices of different companies.

It’s called the Starline project and it had already been presented by Google, which over the last year has been testing the system at its facilities, but is now preparing to move on to the next phase.

Starline is a communication system to unite people at a distance, with the help of holograms, which virtualize the image of one of the interlocutors in the physical presence of the other, making both appear to be talking face to face, separated only by a “window” magic”, as the company calls it.

It uses a combination of cameras and lights to capture and project a 3D virtual image, on a screen also developed for this purpose, which can be seen without the need for virtual reality devices or other accessories. The company reveals that in the last year more than 100 companies have tested the concept at their facilities.

The system will now be set up in the offices of some independent Alphabet companies, to be tested in different environments. This third-party “at-home” experience advances later this year and will involve Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health . Each company involved in the pilot will receive two units of the system in order to test it.

Starline’s technology is still in an experimental phase, but Google believes that this may be a more natural way, compared to other available technologies, to promote long-distance meetings and that one day it will make a difference in the interaction between distant companies and customers. . At this stage, the company only mentions the technology’s potential in a business environment, but when it presented the concept last year, it showed the results of tests carried out in personal communications, as shown in the video.

“To make this possible, we are applying research done in the field of computer vision, machine learning, spatial audio and real-time compression “, explained in a post made on the company’s blog, Clay Bavor, vice president of technology, after the presentation. technology at last year’s edition of Google’s developer conference. ” We also developed a disruptive display  that creates a sensation of volume and depth that is possible to experience without any complementary accessories”, he added. hologram video call

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