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Background

Cisco Systems produces computer networking products and services, specializing in everything from consumer electronics to communications technologies.  Cisco’s newly formed Telepresence System Business Unit (TSBU) called on Speck Design to develop their first entry into the telepresence market place.  This project was considered a key product offering for Cisco and their goal to be the market leader in this category.  The Telepresence project brought together Speck Design’s experience in the evolution of products such as displays, lighting, audio technology, data and audio conferencing, and creation of furniture for companies such as Nissan, Lumileds, Phonic Ear, Texas Instrument, Samsung, Philips, Herman Miller, and Carl Zeiss.

Expectations were for the system to offer a life-like experience in communication through state of the art technologies in HD displays, imaging, advanced lighting and spatial audio coupled with an intuitive user interface.  Cisco felt it was paramount to make sure the complicated and extensive amounts of technology required for such a system would be hidden to the user, creating the feeling of sitting at a meeting with the other participants present. The mantra of the project was “it’s all about the experience”.

Project goals included:

• Create an immersive telepresence experience that makes participants feel they are sitting across the table from other attendees, even when they are halfway around the world.
• Make the system reliable and control the experience to be the same for every participant, every time.
• Through research, conceptual design, industrial design, R&D, functional prototyping and customer verification, Speck Design needed to ensure that the system would be easily upgradeable and created based on Cisco’s QSR requirements.
• The 3000 product consisted of three 65” displays and full 1080p HD cameras in three different family systems that accommodated two, four, and six participants per meeting for the full system.  The system included a custom table and lighting.  The 1000 product consisted of one display and a single camera with no custom furniture.
• Design a system that is as easy and familiar to use as a phone.

Challenge

In order to make it seem as though all participants were indeed at the same table, Speck Design wanted to create the illusion of the conference table blending into one on the screen, with “life-size” participants seated opposite.  Site to site consistency was also paramount, so interior walls at each location were painted the same color.  Speck Design needed to study all of the lighting options including prevent harsh lighting, and how to manage the natural movement of participants in a meeting setting, and seamlessly blend real-time directional sound.  The package needed to come together – furniture to hardware to software to interface – as an intuitive set.  Yet, behind-the-scenes practical challenges included ensuring elements like the CODEC (encoder/decoder) were cooled sufficiently.

Solution

Speck Design was responsible for the design and delivery of mechanical and industrial design and integration of all of the elements of the system.  All furniture, lighting, displays, microphones and frameworks were custom-built for Telepresence to achieve the right effects.  As such, our team began with extensive research on meeting behaviors such as movement and eye contact, lighting for realistic imagery, and transmission of sound.  As part of the research, we studied camera angles through a precision adjustment mechanism, and also studied the different display technologies available at the time.

In the design phase, we evaluated microphones and designed a unique shape for the input device for voice and parameters for optimal distances from each participant to elements of the system.  We also created a low-profile custom-tooled camera housing that would capture the right image with minimal if any distraction of the attendee’s awareness of the process.  Cisco has listed Speck Design on five patents related to the project.

Results

The finished product is one that Cisco cites as “the most sophisticated, yet reliable Telepresence solution in the industry.”  Forecasts predict that Telepresence will grow to be a $1.4 billion a year player on the global market by 2013.  In addition, the product eliminates a large volume of travel as a business need, with corresponding environmental benefits.  Eliminating just one round-trip between New York and London saves 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, equivalent to the emissions of as many as 90 cars in one day.

PROJECT INFO

• Client:

  Cisco

• Project:

  Telepresence System Business Unit

• Industry:

  Networking