Tele-manipulation is a process where a user's activity is extended to a dangerous or inaccessible environment without personal presence. The extension is performed by a master-slave system, with the master device representing the distant environment to the user, and the slave device representing the user to the distant environment. In the classical concept, early telemanipulation systems were simply the elongations of human arms, where muscles were later replaced by external energy sources and artificial actuators, but the control remained at the human operator. Hunorob developed the idea further, as it integrated real-time virtual reality technologies and resulted in an end-product which has been named VirCA.
VirCA implemented the shareable and fully customizable 3D virtual workspace as a central idea. VirCA enabled humans who were not in the same location, to create ideas, then design and implement them together in a shared virtual space.
