France Telecom R&D Introduces Spin-3D: Interactive, Communicating Avatars for a Virtual Environment - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, March 20, 2000

France Telecom R&D, the group's research and development unit, has created a unique collaborative software application that lets remote users work together, create documents and interact in real time in a shared virtual environment. The interface, dubbed Spin-3D, was unveiled at the Cite des Sciences science museum in Paris.

Spin-3D, which was developed in partnership with the Lille Fundamental Information Technology Laboratory (LIFL), appears as a three-dimensional space on the user's PC. For the first time, users are represented within the same virtual environment -- a virtual meeting room, for example -- in the form of "avatars" that replicate their activities, words and movements on the screen.

The avatars are controlled via standard interfaces such as a mouse or joystick, and can manipulate objects situated in the virtual world, or communicate verbally in real time. The representations are created either from photos of users or from sample avatars in an image bank.

France Telecom R&D will further enhance the Spin-3D interface with new developments this summer, including a function that mimics users' facial expressions and movements within the virtual environment. Such functions will improve interactivity by making each user's activity immediately visible to others in the virtual space.

France Telecom R&D is particularly interested in virtual reality applications that employ 3D interfaces in order to support and enhance the user-friendliness of collaborative working solutions. In order to test new applications France Telecom researchers are developing technologies that focus on "voice-enabled" avatars based on the MPEG4 standard, along with clone animation, navigation in virtual cities or buildings, neural nets and the spatial representation of gestures and sound.

The resulting applications will foster emerging Internet and wireless telephone services. The scope for such new services covers all types of activities that benefit from instantaneous multi-user interactivity, from industry and education to commerce and games. One can easily imagine creative teams from around the world brainstorming in a virtual meeting room, multi-skilled design engineers sharing ideas, teachers giving classes in virtual classrooms, untethered product demonstrations, 3D-enhanced customer support desks and much more. Avatars, or clones, also constitute a practical and economical alternative to bandwidth-hungry videophone solutions.

Spin-3D is an extremely simple solution that opens up a broad array of applications. For example, it could be used to simulate the assembly of components for an industrial prototype, pinpoint the position of a boat or trace its route, or even teach people how to use a new camera. Partnerships with several international universities will serve as a platform to develop and trial a distributed virtual laboratory, notably within the scope of the European Divilab project.

France Telecom R&D brings together the multiple research and development capabilities of the France Telecom group. The unit anticipates breakthrough technologies and drives innovation in order to provide customers with best-in-class communications solutions and conceive the ubiquitous technologies of tomorrow. Through France Telecom R&D, France Telecom is the European leader in telecommunications research and development.

France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) is one of the world's leading telecommunications carriers, with 1999 consolidated operating revenues of 27.2 billion euros and operations in more than 75 countries. France Telecom provides businesses, consumers and other carriers with a complete portfolio of solutions that spans local, long-distance and international telephony, data, wireless, multimedia, Internet, cable TV, broadcast and value-added services. France Telecom has been listed on the Paris and New York stock exchanges since October 1997. (www.francetelecom.com)