1

National Tele-Immersion Initiative:

Amela Sadagic, PhD amela@advanced.org

Towards Compelling Tele-Immersive Collaborative Environments

Herman Towles , Jaron Lanier , Henry Fuchs , Andries van Dam , Kostas Daniilidis , Jane Mulligan , Loring Holden and Bob Zeleznik Advanced Network and Services, Armonk (Advanced) Brown University, Providence (Brown) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (UPenn)

1

3 2

4

2

3 1

3 2

2

4 4

co-authors:

2

NTII: a research consortium

Sponsors: Advanced Network and Services National Science Foundation

Partner Schools: Brown University, Providence University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

… a journey to the near future

3

…a glimpse of one possible destination, as seen by an artist in 1997

Medical applications:

-  tele-diagnostics -  tele-assisted surgery -  advanced surgical training

-  preoperative planning

Other: -  tele-meetings -  tele-collaborative design -  computer supported training and education -  3D interactive video -  entertainment

4

…May 2000, before submission of this presentation :

…soon after, in October 2000 :

5

Hardware and software technologies needed:

-  3D real-time system for acquisition of dynamic, real objects (Upenn)

-  static scene acquisition (UNC) -  rendering and stereo display architecture

(UNC) -  high precision headtracking system (UNC) -  modeling and manipulation with virtual

objects (Brown) -  multi-person interaction and collaborative

architecture (Brown)

3 site tele-immersion

6

3 site tele-immersion

Upenn (OC3) Advanced (OC3)

UNC (OC12)

OC12 = 622 Mbit/s OC3 = 155 Mbit/s

Camera arrangement •  a sea of cameras: semicircle of 7 cameras, 3

cameras per each view, 5 views in total

PC1

PC2 PC3 PC4

PC5

 C1

 C2

 C3  C4  C5

 C6

 C7

 C4 data  C3 data  C5 data  C4 data

15 - 25 Mbit/s 1-3 frames/s

7

Equipment: -  acquisition: 5 Dell Pentium III servers (quads, 550 MHz) -  7 digital Sony cameras and 5 firewire interface cards -  rendering: 2 Dell Pentium III (610, 550 Mhz) + nVidia

cards -  HighBall ceiling headtracker

System characteristics: -  acquisition frame rate: 1-3 frames/sec -  display / rendering rate: 20-25 frames/sec -  data rate: 15-25 Mbit/sec

Future

8

Future

Now

One part of NTII team

9

Acknowledgements:

Sponsors: Advanced Network and Services National Science Foundation

Partner Schools: Brown University, Providence University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Q & A