Towards a three-dimensional immersive teleconferencing system: Design and implementation

Abstract

Videoconferencing is becoming attractive for geographically distributed team collaboration. A 3D videoconference provides immersive telepresence and natural representation of all participants in a shared virtual meeting space to enhance quality of human-centered communication. In this thesis, an initial effort towards a 3D immersive teleconferencing system is presented, where the most advanced hardware and software technologies are applied, such as scene acquisition, modeling, rendering, tracking and stereo projective display. Especially the Exact Polyhedral Visual Hull algorithm has been used and proven to be robust for real-time 3D reconstruction. Customer--built polarization-multiplexed displays can provide a significant immersive impression. The Real-time Transport Protocol is employed for real-time communication. Performance analysis demonstrates that the implementation is a feasible framework towards the ultimate goal of 3D collaborative telepresence.