Telepresence Wall Research

Principal Investigator: Henry Fuchs
Funding Agency: Cisco Systems, Inc.
Agency Number: N/A

Abstract
In collaboration with Cisco, UNC is developing a two-site telepresence wall system that aims to create a wall-size electronic window between two sites. We hope such a system will facilitate and encourage natural and casual interaction between groups of people at each site. To facilitate such interaction, the system should provide both a panoramic view of the other room, and also eye contact between pairs of distant participants. Providing both these capabilities is a significant technical challenge, requiring image synthesis from multiple sets of cameras. In 2010-2011 we plan to develop algorithms for improving the synthesized image generated for each site’s wall of display panels. We also plan to configure, acquire, install, test and evaluate a high-quality audio subsystem for the two-site Telepresence Wall system at UNC.