William Shatner was again Captain Kirk standing on the deck of the Enterprise as he donned the virtual reality head-mounted display in Randy Pausch's human and computer interaction lab.

Thanks to the hard work and imagination of a dedicated team of grad students, the Enterprise bridge from Star Trek was re-created virtually, down to the bleeps and blurbs always audible in the background of the original TV show.

Today Shatner is more concerned with science fact than fiction and is writing a book that covers cutting-edge developments in science and technology in the 21st century. This is what prompted him to visit Carnegie Mellon in late October.

Shatner visited research groups in the School of Computer Science and the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems. Accompanying him was co-author Chip Walter, who is adjunct faculty in the Computer Science department.

The book, to be titled I'm Working On That and is set for release next summer. The title comes from a comment physicist Stephen Hawking made as a guest star on Star Trek. On the set was a stage prop of a warp drive to be used in the episode. When Hawking saw it, he said, "I'm working on that." This amused Shatner, who later thought the line would make a good title for his book. The technology he is writing about is always a work in progress.

The first stop on Shatner's tour was the lab of Sebastian Thrun in the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery in Wean Hall. There Shatner met an intelligent nursing robot by the name of Florence who has a wide red mouth, big blue eyes, yellow movable eyebrows -- and her own business card. Her features are animated and capable of expression.

Thrun believes people relate better to machines with humanistic qualities, so it is important that patients feel comfortable with Florence. Her purpose is to monitor and provide companionship for the elderly. She is a mobile robot who can stay with patients and learn their daily habits. In case of a fall or another deviation from the routine, an alert sounds. Back in the hospital, a monitor can then see through a transmittal screen what Florence sees through her electronic eyes. The monitor can also speak to the patient through Florence and determine whether help should be sent.

The virtual reality lab run by Pausch was the next stop for Shatner and Walter. Undergraduate researcher Steve Audia worried that the Enterprise bridge would be less can convincing for Shatner because he had hands-on experience with the original set. A large screen in the lab projected the image that Shatner saw when he donned the head mounted display (HMD) that transported him into the virtual world. With his ever-present tape recorder at hand, he confidently said, "I am standing on the Star Trek bridge" at which point he made a slow circle to capture the 360-degree environment.

Shatner was equally impressed by the next demonstration involving an illusion of height. Again donning the head mounted dispay (HMD), he was fitted with a special left glove that simulated the dropping of a light bulb wen the thumb and forefinger touched. Shatner then entered a scale model virtual environment of downtown Pittsburgh, first at ground level and then from a 4-inch raised platform that slowly elevated the view several stories at a time as the street below him became became smaller and smaller. When Shatner was virtually hovering over the highest building in Pittsburgh, he was asked to step off the platform where he stood. He was visibly afraid to do so, according to graduate student Adam Fass.

Then, in a realistic Star Wars light saber battle, Shatner became quite physical when his opponent's speed increased.

Also included on the tour was a visit to the Virtualized Reality Lab with a demonstration by visiting scholar Shigeyuki Baba of the Robotics department. Shatner visited one virtual reality (VR) lab that allow an explorer to enter real world environments and experience real events from a point of view not realistically possible -- watching a basketball game from center court or a football game from the 50-yard line, for example. Behind this research is a process called dynamic event modeling, which applies advanced computer vision and graphics techniques to let you control what you see, and in 3D to boot.

After these virtually enhanced experiences, Shatner toured the Carnegie Museum Dinosaur Hall from the perspective of Sage, a completely autonomous robot that wanders the exhibit on a mapped path. Sage provides video and audio enhancements for visitors and scolds you if you block his path. Through the use of sonar, infrared and tactile sensors, Sage is able to avoid collisions.

The next stop was Robot Improv, where a research group headed by assistant professor Illah Nourbakhsh creates believable dramatic behavior using two mobile robots. The comedic pair perform an act based on a short script that has one robot trying to leave the room and the other robot trying to get him to stay. Each robot has its own goals, knowledge of the other's location, and an internal emotional model. The robots speak and act based on their current goals, their emotional state and the other robot's last actions. There is no pre-determined script, so the performance is different each time.

By that time Shatner must have been feeling like someone beamed onto another planet being run by machines. But the fun wasn't over yet. The next robotics demonstration involved the Toy Robot Initiative, which allowed Shatner to view life from an insect's point of view. In this demonstration, a gantry robot controls a camera inside an aquarium filled with live roaches. Using a joystick, Shatner was able to "drive" the camera, which magnifies and projects the scene via videotape onto a screen. Amplify the sound and you get a realistic view of what it is like to be a bug.

Robotics research scientist Chuck Thorpe gave Shatner and Walters an overview of navigational robotics research in the Navigational Lab (NavLab), which has produced a series of self-propelled robotic cars and trucks. The vehicles adjust speed due to meet road conditions such as snow and ice and to avoid obstacles. RALPH (Rapidly Adapting Lateral Position Handler) uses video images to steer the vehicle and keep it on the road. Thorpe dreams of a future without road rage, where fleets of self-driven limousines shuttle passengers from airports to their destinations and back.

The speech translation lab headed by Alex Waibel in the Language Technologies Institute deviates from any robotic future. The lab is working with speech translation that may someday enable humans who share no common language to converse directly with each other. C-STAR, the lab's Consortium for Speech Translation Advanced Research, is developing systems that translate spoken utterances from one language to another. The groundbreaking computer speech-to-speech translation technology can translate among six languages at six different locations around the world.

The final stop on Shatner's tour involved virtual navigation. Dan Siewiorek, Director of the Human & Computer Interaction Institute (H.C.I.I.), presented a wearable computer demonstration that had Shatner donning another head-mounted display to take a house tour complete with blueprints. The project, developed through a collaborative effort between H.C.I.I and the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems, has also developed a virtual tour of the CMU campus. With capabilities like this in the future, we may all be taking armchair voyages.

Kathy Brown Sutton