Applied immersive telepresence systems

Two novel systems for immersive audio-visual telepresence are presented. The following approaches are motivated by perceptual studies. First a comparison between human perception of space and conventional technologies for telepresence was made. The results of this comparison have shown a lack of fidelity due to limited support of binaural and binocular cues. Both cues play an important role in perception of space. Also tactile cues can enhance the perception of space and are used for a special telepresence system. These facts resulted in the development of the Binaural Binocular Heads (BiBiH), systems with enhanced spatial resolution. For data transmission audio and video components have been developed. Additionally a component for the transmission of positional data from a head-tracking system and a robot-controlling component have been developed for the BiBiH. A component for disparity adjustment has been introduced to enhance the operating range of the stereo video system. The advantages of the two systems in teleconferencing and immersive telepresence applications are shown.