Tele-Immersive Environments for Everybody.

Rahul Malik, Suk-Kyu Lee, Miles Johnson, Rob Kooper and Peter Bajcsy

2008 NCSA Private Sector (PSP) Annual Meeting, May 12-14, NCSA, Illinois (2008)

Tele-immersive environments for everybody (TEEVE) are designed to facilitate communication and collaboration between people. Therefore, the central objects of interest in a tele-immersive system are these people, the things they jointly manipulate, and the tools they need to perform this manipulation. This poster and demonstration will present a prototype system of real-time 3D scene reconstruction using visible and thermal infrared spectrum cameras across multiple geographically different sites, as well as our simulation capabilities to adaptively configure the TEEVE systems according to the space, activity and cost constraints defined by users. The use of multiple spectral cameras aims at improving robustness of the 3D reconstruction while the 3D scene simulation is critical for better understanding of camera placements.

The demonstration will allow the attendees to step into two different TEEVE environments at NCSA, where they will be digitally cloned in real-time and immersed into a common 3D virtual space. The physical distances between the two TEEVE environments will be removed by fusing the two 3D digital scenes and hence the participants would be able to experience remote collaborations in 3D.