True-view videoconferencing system through 3-D impression of telepresence

It cart be argued that an ideal teleconferencing system would offer a sense of presence comparable to that afforded by real face-to-face meetings. In contrast, traditional desktop videoconferencing loses essential socially im portant phenomena such as true perspective views, live facial expressions a nd tacit body language. This paper reports a prototype concept demonstrator under development at BT Laboratores that addresses these issues in order t o make the use of videoconferencing a normal social activity rather than a means of merely getting messages across the channel. The idea is to place p articipants from different remote sites in a coherent virtual environment n aturally extended from the real world. The participants have correct views of each other and the illusion of close proximity. The rationale is to buil d on the demonstrator and enhance it with increasingly realistic functional components as the relevant technical solutions become available. Results a re presented of a stereo-based vision system which can synthesise novel (or virtual camera) perspective views of the scene from two fixed camera views . The technique is currently capable of providing 'look-around' views and a certain degree of navigation capability around the scene. Research issues are discussed together with the practical difficulties that remain to be so lved in implementing a true-view, telepresence, videoconferencing system.