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By Eric Mankin
USC Chronicle
Development of a new kind of immersive teleconferencing system in which three-dimensionally modeled “avatars” of human conferees will interact is the vision held out by computer scientist Ulrich Neumann.
Neumann, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering, is working on the project as part of the Annenberg Center for Communication research initiative.
According to Neumann, who has attracted international attention for his “augmented reality” work using computers to help people navigate the real world (see USC Chronicle Sept. 9, 1996), the project will open new vistas not just in telecommunications, but also in entertainment technology. It will also dovetail with the two other communication projects that form the new Annenberg Center research initiative.
The initial teleconference experimental system will involve locations at USC; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the University of Illinois, Chicago; and New York City. Each will be equipped with a “tele-cubicle” - an oversized video display system - that presents a stereo image when viewed with polarizing glasses. The head movements of the tele-cubicle user are tracked so that the projected screen images present a highly immersive 3D viewing experience. Like the familiar virtual reality goggles, the tele-cubicle display can give the viewer the sensation of being in a computer-generated world.
Four such tele-cubicles in the four locations will be melded in the immersive teleconferencing mode, giving participants the impression of being in a single, contiguous volume.
According to Neumann, other participants will be seeing not video images of each other, but animated avatars — three dimensional models of the remote participants that are communicated by a one-time or periodic exchange of a massive amount of data, and then stored.
During the interaction, a participant's avatar, viewed on the remote screens, will mimic the actions of its live original. The sensing and animation of facial expressions, including mouth and eye movements, are among the challenging technical problems that must be overcome.
Because the avatars are 3D models that are animated in response to their live participant's movements, avatars can, for example, be wearing formal dress while the human original is in casual clothes.
Acquiring the animation data and transmitting them efficiently is a major computing task, said Neumann, who is collaborating with colleagues in the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), including Christoph von der Malsburg, Harmut Neven and Chris Kyriakakis.
The tele-cubicle's sensing and animation capabilities will also enable new human-computer interaction styles. For example, a person's gaze direction and hand gestures may be used for giving commands to a computer.
The project is conceived as a three-year effort in which the design and computer synthesis of avatars becomes increasingly sophisticated, in communication with the sister Annenberg projects, Labyrinth and Metamorphosis.
The tele-cubicle project will also have key participation from Advanced Networks and Services Inc., a research company that has engaged virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier for the effort.
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Ulrich Neumann
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