Humans are digitizing, or at least they have the potential to. This means we need to examine how we exploit the connection points that humans have with digital fabrics and service layers to build better societies. This is the somewhat grandiose-yet-genuine pledge that comes out of NTT Corporation driven by its Human Informatics Laboratories (HIN).
The NTT HIN division is conducting research and development into what it calls the “Metaverse in the IOWN era,” a next-generation communications platform with ultra-high speed, ultra-low latency and ultra-low power consumption that will merge the real world and the cyber world.
Current work sees the latest efforts at HIN attempting to divide the metaverse into its constituent elements: Space and People (avatars), using its Innovative Optical and Wireless Network technology as a crucial element of the backbone.
A Universe Of Metaverses
NTT says that the word metaverse was originally the name of a fictional communication service in a virtual space that appeared in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. Later, as technology advanced and various virtual space services emerged, it became a general noun and came to refer to all virtual space services on the internet where people interacted with others through their avatar alter egos.
“There are a wide variety of metaverse-like virtual space services, from chat services that allow users to interact with others through avatars in a 2D virtual space, such as Fujitsu Habitat, which was launched in 1990, to services that cover economic activities close to reality, such as buying and selling land and items using currency in the virtual space, such as Second Life (by Linden Lab), and more recently, multiplayer virtual space online games such as Fortnite, to business-oriented offerings such as Horizon Workrooms (Meta Platforms) and Mesh for Microsoft Teams,” noted NTT, in demonstrations of its own metaverse offering at the company’s annual R&D Forum expo in Tokyo this month.
As such, the concept of the metaverse and metaverse-like services may now evolve further, potentially via the use of XR (Cross Reality) related technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), both of which need to be harnessed far more deeply and in a more tightly integrated and managed way.
“At the NTT Institute of Human Sciences, we aim to promote the fusion of the real and the virtual world in order to expand people’s experiences, improve the quality of connections between people, and between people and society, and realize a rich society that accepts diversity,” said an NTT demonstration spokesperson.
Moon Rover Power Pump
From the metaverse to moonshots then, (life inside the NTT R&D bubble rarely stays in one place – or on one planet – for a very long time) and the company’s work to use “lunar regolith” as a conductive transport layer for power was also showcased this year. For the astronomically unaware, regolith is the layer of dust found across the surface of the moon, and similar examples also occur on Earth (known as plain old dirt and dust to us) and on asteroids. Regolith may also be elsewhere, in the far reaches of space.
Through the use of its own electromagnetic sensors and power transmission technology, NTT was able to demonstrate moon buggies powering up and rolling across the surface of the moon (okay, the demo used sand… and it happened in a backwater office district of Tokyo) to show how this technology can actually work. Only one question remained at the end of this demo; one member of the press asked the deeply experienced NTT R&D guru, “Have you actually been to the moon yet, y’know, to test this out?”
We’ll save you his answer; he was very polite.
‘Omotenashi’ Hospitality Robots
Back down on our blue planet, NTT is also developing technologies to provide what the Japanese call digitally-enabled ‘omotenashi’, also known as hospitality robots. This development hopes to contribute to solving social issues such as a declining workforce and addressing support for people who require care.
With some of the work in this space carried out as part of a business alliance with Panasonic Corporation, NTT says the two companies are working to achieve “service innovations” and “evolution of user experience” with what we might call hospitality robots.
“One of the most urgent public service needs includes providing quality services and hospitality, (omotenashi) in Japan, to visitors from around the world as the number of foreign tourists is expected to continue to rise. There is also a pressing need to develop services that support a society where the physically challenged and elderly feel safe and secure. Against this backdrop, the collaboration between NTT and Panasonic aims to share their technologies to develop new services for the foreseeable future that realize service innovations and user experience,” said an NTT spokesperson, in a technology briefing in Tokyo this week.
As always, an immersion into NTT R&D is a tour de force on the senses as exhibition attendees are whisked between reality, virtual reality and new realities being showcased in still-prototyped technologies, some of which may be ready next year, or next decade… it’s a long-term play on show here.
