Towards Next Generation 3D Teleconferencing Systems

Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2019

We present a methodology to develop a low-cost, low-bandwidth visual telepresence system using commodity depth sensors. To obtain a precise representation of the participants, we fuse together multiple views extracted using a deep background subtraction method. We build a proof-of-concept display composed of a video projector and a quadrangular pyramid made of acrylic, to demonstrate the visualization of a remote person without the need for head-mounted displays. Our system represents an attempt to democratize high-fidelity 3D telepresence using off-the-shelf components.

ABSTRACT Telepresence has gone a long way since first seminal works on shared task and person spaces [1]. After a number of technologies, such as broadband internet, high quality HD lowdelay video compression, or web applications, have become mature enough, several products have been able to irrupt into the market establishing a solid step forward towards practical true Telepresence solutions. Despite these advances, there is still work to do in what concerns naturality and usability.

Augmented Reality [Working Title], 2021

Benefits of AR technologies have been well proven in collaborative industrial applications, for example in remote maintenance and consultancy. Benefits may also be high in telepresence applications, where virtual and mixed reality (nowadays often referred as extended reality, XR) technologies are used for sharing information or objects over network. Since the 90’s, technical enablers for advanced telepresence solutions have developed considerably. At the same time, the importance of remote technologies has grown immensely due to general disruption of work, demands for reducing travelling and CO2, and the need for preventing pandemics. An advanced 3D telepresence solution benefits from using XR technologies. Particularly interesting are solutions based on HMD or glasses type of near-eye-displays (NED). However, as AR/VR glasses supporting natural occlusions and accommodation are still missing from the market, a good alternative is to use screen displays in new ways, better supporting...

2002

ABSTRACT We examine OnLive Traveler as a case study. Traveler is a clientserver application allowing real-time synchronous communication between individuals over the Internet. The Traveler client interface presents the user with a shared virtual 3D world, in which participants are represented by avatars. The primary mode of communication is through multi-point, full duplex voice, managed by the server.

Tenth IEEE International …, 2008

We present our implementation and evaluation of TEEVE, a distributed 3D tele-immersive system. TEEVE is among the first to support multi-stream/multi-site 3D teleimmersive environments with COTS hardware and software infrastructures. It promotes collaborative physical activities among geographically dispersed sites by immersing the 3D representations of remote participants into a joint 3D virtual space. In this paper, we describe our implementation of TEEVE and introduce the recent advances in TEEVE's different components. In particular, we present an implemented protocol for ViewCast-based semantic-aware data dissemination to support multi-site remote collaboration. We evaluate the TEEVE system by deploying it on the Internet. The experimental results demonstrate that it achieves stable visual quality, soft real-time delay, and efficient resource usage.

Image Analysis for …, 2009

Small digital video cameras have become increasingly common, appearing on portable consumer devices such as cellular phones. The widespread use of video-conferencing, however, is limited in part by the lack of bandwidth available on such devices. Also, videoconferencing can produce feelings of discomfort in conversants due to a lack of co-presence. Current techniques to increase co-presence are not practical in the consumer market due to the costly and elaborate equipment required (such as stereoscopic displays and multicamera arrays).

2002

Figure 1: Our 3D tele-immersion realization with the local user manipulating the visible human data set using a virtual laser pointer. The local user sees the remote collaborator in perspectively correct 3D stereo, and both users are able to manipulate in 3D the shared visible human object.

2002

We describe Coliseum, a desktop system for immersive teleconferencing. Five cameras attached to a desktop LCD monitor are directed at a participant. View synthesis methods produce arbitrary-perspective renderings of the participant from these video streams, and transmit them to other participants. Combining these renderings in a shared synthetic environment gives the illusion of having remote participants interacting in a common space.

2005

Immersive telecommunication is a new challenging field that enables a user to share a virtual space with remote participants. The main objective is to offer rich communication modalities, as similar as those used in the face-to-face meetings like gestures, gaze awareness, realistic images, and correct sound direction. Moreover, full body interaction with physics simulation is presented as a natural interface. As a result, the user can be immersed and has interaction with virtual objects including remote participants. This would overcome the limitations both of the conventional video-based telecommunication and also the VR-based collaborative virtual environment approaches.

2008

Abstract 3D tele-immersion (3DTI) has recently emerged as a new way of video-mediated collaboration across the Internet. Unlike conventional 2D video-conferencing systems, it can immerse remote users into a shared 3D virtual space so that they can interact or collaborate" virtually". However, most existing 3DTI systems can support only two sites of collaboration, due to the huge demand of networking resources and the lack of a simple yet efficient data dissemination model.