A multimodal Internet-based telepresence system with interactive stereo vision, additional photo-realistic predictive display, and kinesthetic bilateral coupling in three degrees of freedom is presented. For easy coupling of various telepresence components by a unified interface structure and a generic link management protocol a CORBA based interconnection framework has been developed. By solving a peg-in-hole task in an industrial environment and with varying communication delay times, the system provides all capabilities for multimodal telepresent remote maintenance and assembly.

We present a distributed PC-based multimodal (haptic, visual and acoustic) telepresence and virtual presence system. Two desktop kinesthetic devices (DeKiFeD3 and DeKiTop3) with 3 degrees-of-freedom have been developed for multi-modal telepresence. Feedback to the human modalities of the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile and temperature senses is generated using appropriate actuator hardware. We present several applications in virtual presence and teleoperation in physical remote environments.