About

IEEE Telepresence is an IEEE Future Directions initiative launched in 2021 with a focus on advance telepresence technology that would enable a user’s remote presence at a different physical location: a) feeling as if being there, and b) having a similar effect as if being there – in appearance to others and in effectual action, via telerobotics.

IEEE Telepresence is creating a community for projects, events and activities on telepresence technologies – covering topics such as teleoperations – operating/manipulation equipment as if present in cabin/control room; Moving heavy equipment, driving agricultural machines, perform tele-medicine.

Fields of Interest: Accelerate the missing technology components and encourage integrated telepresence systems. Create new interfaces for teleoperations. Create Community, Roadmap, Standard

IEEE Telepresence Leadership

Initiative Co-Chair

Tiago H. Falk is a Full Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre on Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications (INRS-EMT), University of Quebec, where he directs the Multisensory Signal Analysis and Enhancement (MuSAE) Lab focused on building next-generation human-machine interfaces in both real and virtual settings. He is also Co-director of the INRS-UQO Mixed Research Unit on Cybersecurity, where research is being conducted to make human-machine interfaces secure and reliable by tackling emerging vulnerabilities to artificial intelligence algorithms. He is Co-chair of the Technical Committee (TC) on Brain-Machine Interface Systems of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (SMCS), Co-chair of the IEEE Telepresence Initiative, and Steering Committee member of the IEEE BRAIN Technical Community 2.0, the IEEE SPS Autonomous Systems Initiative, and the IEEE SPS Data Science Initiative. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE SMCS eNewsletter, and member-at-large of the IEEE SMCS Board of Governors.

Initiative Co-Chair

Jan van Erp is principal scientist with The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and full professor of tangible user interaction with the University of Twente. Jan obtained a master’s degree in Experimental Psychology from Leiden University and a PhD in Computer Science from Utrecht University, both in The Netherlands. His research focusses on multisensory perception and cognition, applied neuroscience, robotics, and human-machine collaboration in complex environments. Jan is also an IPMA C certified project manager and acted as program director for many (international) R&D programs, including a 24M€ program on Brain Computer Interfaces. Jan published more than a hundred peer reviewed papers (h-index 45), held several auxiliary board and advisory functions (a.o. for ETSI, ISO, NATO and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences) and serves on the editorial board of five scientific journals. Jan is the current (vice-)president of the Eurohaptics Society, general chair of Eurohaptics 2020, chair of the TNO Institutional Review Board for human subjects experiments, chair of the NATO Research Group Cognitive Neuro-enhancement, and team lead of team i-Botics (finalist in the ANA Avatar xprize competition). Public profiles: nl.linkedin.com/in/janvanerp; scholar.google.com/citations?user=3W1xn9EAAAAJ; orcid.org/0000-0002-6511-2850.

Founding Chair, 2021-2024 Chair

Adrian Stoica, PhD is a Senior Research Scientist and Principal at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). During his over 25 years at JPL he was Principal Investigator for many government projects funded by NASA, DARPA, OUSD, USAF, etc; he supervised the JPL Robotic Systems Decision, Estimation, and Controls group for 10 years, and is now Program Manager for the JPL Blue Sky Studies Program. His joined IEEE 30 years ago, and during the last decade he has been most active in IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, where he served twice as Vice-President. He is also active in IEEE Future Directions, IEEE Systems Council, and other IEEE Units. He is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Fellow. Adrian founded 3 conferences on adaptive systems for space, quality of life, and secure technologies. His expertise and passion covers several areas including intelligent machines, telepresence, robotics, human-machine systems and space exploration. He is enthusiastic about telepresence and teleoperations – in the sense of being able to see, feel and act remotely – and thinks it will profoundly transform the society

IEEE Telepresence Steering Committee

Role	Name		Title/Affiliation
Initiative Co-Chair	Tiago Falk		Professor at INRS-EMT
Initiative Co-Chair	Jan van Erp		Principal Scientist, TNO
Events Chair	Ferat Sahin		Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology
Competition Chair	Rob Mueller		Senior Technologist, NASA
Roadmap Co-Chairs	Neal Lii		Domain Head, Space Robotic Assistance at DLR
Roadmap Co-Chairs	Leila Takayama		VP of Design and HRI at Robust.AI
Outreach Co-Chairs	Alireza Mohammadi		Associate Professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn
Outreach Co-Chairs	Yonas Teodros Tefera		Research Team Lead at Istituto Italiano di Technologia
Resource Center Chair	Nikhil Deshpande		Associate Professor at University of Nottingham
Application Chair: Space Telepresence	Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu		Assistant Division Manager at NASA JPL
Application Chair: Telehealth/Telemedecine	Giacinto Barresi		Professor a University of the West of England
Application Chair: Disaster, Defense, Emergency Telepresence	John Blitch		Cognitive Scientist, Blitz Solutions LLC

Advisory Board Members

Participating OUs

Contact Telepresence Initiative at [email protected].

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