3D Tele-Collaboration Over INTERNET2

Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems XIV, 2007

We present a point based reconstruction and transmission pipeline for a collaborative tele-immersion system. Two or more users in different locations collaborate with each other in a shared, simulated environment as if they were in the same physical room. Each user perceives point-based models of distant users along with collaborative data like molecule models. Disparity maps, computed by a commercial stereo solution, are filtered and transformed into clouds of 3D points. The clouds are compressed and transmitted over the network to distant users. At the other side the clouds are decompressed and incorporated into the 3D scene. The viewpoint used to display the 3D scene is dependent on the position of the head of the user. Collaborative data is manipulated through natural hand gestures. We analyse the performance of the system in terms of computation time, latency and photo realistic quality of the reconstructed models.

Human Interface Technology Laboratory Technical Report TR-99-1, http://www. hitl. washington. edu/publications/r-99-1, 1999

We describe a Mixed Reality conferencing application which uses the overlay of virtual images on the real world to support three dimensional remote computer supported collaborative work. Remote collaborators are represented on Virtual Monitors which can be freely positioned about a user in space. Users can collaboratively view and interact with virtual objects using a shared virtual whiteboard. This is possible through precise virtual image registration using fast and accurate computer vision techniques also described in ...

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013

A collaboration scenario involving a remote helper guiding in real time a local worker in performing a task on physical objects is common in a wide range of industries including health, mining and manufacturing. An established ICT approach to supporting this type of collaboration is to provide a shared visual space and some form of remote gesture. The shared space and remote gesture are generally presented in a 2D video form. Recent research in tele-presence has indicated that technologies that support co-presence and immersion not only improve the process of collaboration but also improve spatial awareness of the remote participant. We therefore propose a novel approach to developing a 3D system based on a 3D shared space and 3D hand gestures. A proof of concept system for remote guidance called HandsIn3D has been developed. This system uses a head tracked stereoscopic HMD that allows the helper to be immersed in the virtual 3D space of the worker's workspace. The system captures in 3D the hands of the helper and fuses the hands into the shared workspace. This paper introduces HandsIn3D and presents a user study to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

Proceedings of the first annual ACM SIGMM conference on Multimedia systems - MMSys '10, 2010

Though the quality of imaging devices, the accuracy of algorithms that construct 3D data, and the hardware available to render such data have all improved, the algorithms available to calibrate, reconstruct, and then visualize such data are difficult to use, extremely noise sensitive, and unreasonably slow. In this paper, we describe a multi-camera system that creates a highly accurate (on the order of a centimeter), 3D reconstruction of an environment in real time (under 30 ms) that allows for remote interaction between users. The paper addresses the aforementioned deficiencies by featuring an overview of the technology and algorithms used to calibrate, reconstruct, and render objects in the system. The algorithm produces partial 3D meshes, instead of dense point clouds, which are combined on the renderer to create a unified model of the environment. The chosen representation of the data allows for high compression ratios for transfer to remote sites. We demonstrate the accuracy and speed of our results on a variety of benchmarks and data collected from our own system. Figure 1: A user inside of the teleimmersion system interacting with an MRI dataset. The top-left image depicts a sample image from a camera and the other images depict the mirrored 3D representation of the user inside of the virtual environment from various views.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 31st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology Adjunct Proceedings

In this paper we outline the design of a mixed-reality system to support object-focused remote collaboration. Here, being able to adjust collaborators' perspectives on the object as well as understand one another's perspective is essential to support effective collaboration over distance. We propose a low-cost mixed-reality system that allows users to: (1) quickly align and understand each other's perspective; (2) explore objects independently from one another, and (3) render gestures in the remote's workspace. In this work, we focus on the expert's role and we introduce an interaction technique allowing users to quickly manipulation 3D virtual objects in space.

Proc. Multi-Media Modeling MMM95, World Scientific, Singapore, 1995

Virtual environments define a new interface for networked multimedia applications. The sense of" presence" in the virtual environment is an important requirement for collaborative activities involving multiple remote users working with social interactions. Using virtual actors within the shared environment is a supporting tool for presence. In this paper, we present a shared virtual life network with virtual humans that provides a natural interface for collaborative working. Keywords: Multimedia, Virtual Life, Computer ...