We may be soon seeing a three-dimensional Internet, pets that never pee and magic books whose images pop up as you turn the pages.

That's the buzz from about 40 experts brought together last week by University of Calgary kinesiology professor Larry Katz at the iCentre, a virtual reality (VR) "cave" on the U of C campus.

Aside from all the fun this will bring, some of the ideas discussed at this elite seminar will undoubtedly change our workplaces, schools, hospitals, and even our homes.

"Factories are busy places with thousands of people working in them and they have to change" says Pierre Boulanger, a professor and director of the Advanced Man-Machine Lab at the University of Alberta.

Tom Keenan, Business Edge
Professors Larry Katz, left, and Ehud Sharlin check out Aibo, Sony's pricey robotic dog.

Boulanger demonstrated a rapid prototype development environment for making thousands of replicas of an object, in this case a small statue of Egyptian queen Nefertiti. He predicts that this technology will soon be commonplace, driven by business forces such as shorter product life cycles, reduced lead times and a desire for greater product variety.

Boulanger also argues, and most computer users would agree, that "we need to get away from the 20th-century ideas that humans have to adapt to the computer, and that a long training period is required.”

Instead, he preaches "human-centred automation," where the machines adapt to us.

In fact, our machines may actually become better than us at many tasks. Dr. Garnette Sutherland, a pioneering neurosurgeon at the U of C, displays grisly photographs of a spinal cord tumor he had to remove.

"It took me 12 hours to cut all these connections," he says, "and I suspect a robotic apparatus could do it better and faster.”

He notes that "neurosurgeons are trained to operate at an accuracy level of one millimetre.”

A robot can be at least 30 times more precise.

Sutherland's eyes light up as he describes the $30-million neuroArm project that he's leading. His group plans to build "the world's first image-guided, magnetic-resonance-compatible surgical robot.”

Sutherland also notes that robots can be fitted with tools that could not be operated by the human hand, such as a "device that goes behind a blood vessel and comes back at us."

He sees himself conducting brain surgery, sitting in an ergonomic chair, in a separate room from the patient, peering at multiple screens. His hands would grasp manipulators that drive robotic arms fitted with surgical tools and probes. He also thinks medical students of the future will learn their craft through VR mentoring and by doing operations on simulated patients.

MagicBooks, which involve wearing special glasses that display 3-D images, might also play a role in medical education. So when a med student hits the section on the spleen, bingo! It pops up.

Such tools may soon become widespread, and for good reason. Dr. Michael Armitage, a medical doctor and former minister in the South Australian state government, predicts that "for insurance and liability reasons, doctors won't be allowed to perform certain operations on humans until they have successfully done a certain number of them in virtual reality."

Tele-surgery is actually happening. Dr. Mehran Anvari of McMaster University reports doing "21 telerobotic laparoscopic surgeries ... between North Bay and Hamilton.”

In all cases, the patients survived the operation and recovered fully.

To make VR surgery practical, surgeons would like to have all their senses connected to the patient.

U of C professor Jim Parker told the conference about his audio work, primarily for VR gaming applications.

When Parker said "I'm not sure that sound is that important in surgery," Sutherland quickly jumped in with "it is - we sometimes know what kind of tissue we're cutting by the sucking sound."

Even more important is a sense of touch feedback - what's known as "haptics" in the VR business. Anvari used the Handshake VR Virtual Touch Toolbox for NASA's NEEMO 7 project.

This involved guiding underwater "aquanauts" through simulated surgeries on a mock patient.

Where will the leading-edge work in VR be done?

Handshake VR is a spinoff of the University of Waterloo and it's still based there. Although it has partners such as MD Robotics Ltd. in Brampton, Ont., the neuroArm project is firmly rooted in Alberta, thanks to Sutherland and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.

"Alberta has the opportunity at present to become the centre of visualization research for Canada," says Walter Stewart, global co-ordinator for grid strategy for California-based Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Noting Alberta's support of projects such as neuroArm, he says "Your government gets it. They have the cash, which gives them the freedom to get it."

All work and no play would not a good conference make, so professor Ehud Sharlin of the U of C's Interactions Lab showed off his virtual pet, Sony Entertainment's new Aibo. Although a bit pricey at $2,000 US, it might be the perfect puppy for a busy person.

With its sensors, sound generators, and wireless capability, you could program it to bark if someone comes into the house during certain times of the day. Or it could send you a warning e-mail.

However, Aibo could turn out to be a Trojan Horse. There are reports of viruses infecting them.

An Aibo in Oslo, Norway, allegedly set a house fire that killed three humans (and itself.)

With Internet access, an Aibo might go online and buy itself some silicon bones with its owner's credit card. Any technology that can be used for good can be used for evil.

Moral to designers and users of new technologies: You can teach an old dog new tricks. Think twice before you do.

Web watch:
www.westgrid.ca/support/collab/seminar-vr.php
www.ahfmr.ab.ca/publications/newsletter/Winter05
www.files/inside/neuroarm.htm

(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)