Telepresence for in-situ microscopy

We present an approach for remote operation of instruments in the Internet environment. We have applied this approach to in-situ electron microscopy experiments that require dynamic interaction with the specimen under observation, as it is excited with external stimuli, i.e., temperature variation, EM field variation etc. The dynamic operations include control of the sample's position and orientation under the electron beam, the illumination conditions and focus, etc. Remote control via wide area networks like the Internet that do not offer real time data and command delivery guarantees is not practical for the finely tuned adjustments that dynamic studies require. We suggest that an effective approach to remote operation for this class of dynamic control applications must involve automated control operations performed near the instrument in order to eliminate the wide area network real-time delivery requirement. Our approach to this problem is based on advanced computer vision algorithms that permit instrumentation adjustments to be made in response to information extracted from the video signal generated by the microscope imaging system. We have determined the type of servo loops needed to enable remote operation and collaboration, and have introduced a novel partitioning of the control architecture for implementing this approach.