This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I Project will prototype InterCam, a system for providing interactive, telerobotically-controlled, live video on the world-wide web. The InterCam system will be based on an operational research system developed earlier bar the project principles. To establish commercial viability, it must be determined whether the system can be developed on a cost-effective hardware/software infrastructure, as well as important additional functionality. A new system on an Intel/Windows NT platform will be developed. Also to be done will be re-engineering of the timesharing functionality at the heart of the software as a multithreaded distributed operating system, exploiting the multiprocessing functionality, and platform transparency of Java, new shareable control methods. and exploring the plausibility of incorporating basic computer vision capabilities into the system. It is hard to overstate the potential impact of this technology. Many different concrete application areas have been identified such as: teleconferencing ("look where you want to look"), security, remote process monitoring accessible from anywhere, affordably, Internet publishing, and product and real-estate marketing (the virtual ahowroom or open-house)
