The IST project VIRTUE has been started at the beginning of the year 2000 in the context of the 5th framework programme. It will develop the innovative technology necessary to produce a convincing impression of presence in a semi-immersive teleconferencing system. The consortium consists of British Telecom, Sony, Heriot Watt University, TU Delft, TNO (Human Factors Research Institute, NL) and Image Processing Department of HHI.
The convincing impression of presence can be explained as follows: You are at a meeting table with people spaced around in front of you. You are able to communicate with them effectively as if they are sitting next to you in the same room, in fact you are led to believe they are present in the same room - but they are actually located at several remote locations.
For many types of meeting this high-realism telepresence conferencing system will replace the need to travel. Technologies in computer vision and graphics have developed to a position where this vision is achievable. VIRTUE will make this happen in Europe. VIRTUE will investigate the human factors involved in maximising the effectiveness and realism of telepresence, and to use them to drive the design of a final demonstrator. A mock-up of the final demonstrator is shown in Figure 2. The first prototype demonstrator was presented at the IST event 2001 in Düsseldorf.
Recent publications
O. Schreer, P. Kauff: "Immersive 3D -Videokonferenz", Der Fernmeldeingenieur, Heft 8, 55. Jahrgang, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Leben Georg Heidecker GmbH, Erlangen, August 2001, invited journal paper; in German.
O. Schreer, N. Brandenburg, P. Kauff: "Real-Time Disparity Analysis for Applications in Immersive Tele-Conference Scenarios - A Comparative Study", Proc. of 11th Int. Conf. on Image Analysis and Processing, Palermo, Italy, Sept. 2001.
O. Schreer, N. Brandenburg, S. Askar, P. Kauff: "Hybrid Recursive Matching and Segmentation-Based Postprocessing in Real-Time Immersive Video Conferencing", Proc. of Vision, Modeling and Visualization 2001, Stuttgart, Germany, Nov. 2001.
O. Schreer, N. Brandenburg, S. Askar, M. Trucco: "A Virtual 3D Video-Conference System Providing Semi-Immersive Telepresence: A Real-Time Solution in Hardware and Software", Proc. of eBusiness and eWork 2001, Venice, Italy, 17-19 October 2001.
O. Schreer, P.Sheppard: "VIRTUE - The step towards immersive telepresence in virtual video-conference systems", eBusiness and eWorks 2000, Madrid, Spain, Oct. 2000.
O. Schreer, N. Brandenburg, P. Kauff: "A Comparative Study on Disparity Analysis Based on Convergent and Rectified Views", 11. British Machine Vision Conference, Bristol, United Kingdom, Sept. 2000.
O. Schreer, N. Brandenburg, P. Kauff: "Disparitätsanalyse konvergenter und rektifizierter Stereoansichten: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung", 22.DAGM-Symposium Mustererkennung'2000, Kiel, Germany, Sept. 2000.
P. Kauff, R. Schäfer, O. Schreer: "Tele-Immersion in Shared Presence Conference Systems", Int. Broadcasting Convention‘2000, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sept. 2000.