Tired of Zoom calls? Company offers at-home hologram machines
Tired of Zoom calls? Company offers at-home hologram machines
(REUTERS) - Looking for a new way to communicate during the pandemic? A Los Angeles-area company has created phone booth-sized machines to beam live holograms into your living room.
The device made by PORTL Inc lets users talk in real time with a life-sized hologram of another person. The machines also can be equipped with technology that can enable interaction with recorded holograms of historical figures or relatives who have passed away.
Each PORTL device is seven feet tall, five feet wide and two feet deep, and can be plugged into a standard wall outlet. Anyone with a camera and a white background can send a hologram to the machine in what Chief Executive David Nussbaum called "holoportation."
"We say if you can’t be there, you can beam there," said Nussbaum, who previously worked at a company that developed a hologram of Ronald Reagan for the former president’s library and digitally resurrected rapper Tupac Shakur.
"We are able to connect military families that haven’t seen each other in months, people from opposite coasts" or anyone who is social distancing to fight the coronavirus, Nussbaum added. Prices for the machine start at $60,000, a cost that Nussbaum expects will drop over the next three to five years.
The company also plans a smaller tabletop device with a lower price tag early next year. They are also offering a smartphone app to allow people to become a hologram for others who own a unit.
"An app is being developed right now that mimics a studio and puts it right into an app, a series of filters with shadows, reflections, background environments, different colors, color correction, resizing and then obviously you can just use your own mobile service to beam into any hologram portal," said Nussbaum.
The devices can also be equipped with artificial intelligence technology from Los Angeles-based company StoryFile to produce hologram recordings that can be archived. Adding that to the current device brings the cost to at least $85,000.
The companies are promoting the idea to museums, which could let visitors question a hologram of a historical figure, and to families to record information for future generations. People can feel like they are having a conversation with a recorded hologram, said StoryFile Chief Executive Heather Smith.
"(You) feel their presence, see their body language, see all their non-verbal cues," she said. "You feel like you’ve actually talked to that individual even though they were not there."
