This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop the technology for a "3D Video Immersion Room", based on the company's previous 3D video capture work. A user of this room will don a Head Mounted Display (HMD) with a camera attached. Entering the room, the user will experience immersive virtual scenarios containing arbitrary combinations of (1) realistic live 3D video from a Zaxel 3D Video Capture Studio, (2) prerecorded Zaxel 3D video, (3) virtual Computer Graphics (CG) content, and (4) the actual room, people, and objects around them. The proposed research will provide a new paradigm for interaction with live or recorded 3D content. The system will very accurately track the position and gaze of the viewer via the camera attached to the HMD. The investigative team will extend work on camera-based marker tracking so a large space can be instrumented with paper markers. The system will automatically determine the position and orientation of the camera relative to these markers at video frame rate. It will be quickly self-calibrating so it can be set up by simply attaching the paper markers to the walls and slowly sweeping the camera around the room. Thus, this technology will be much cheaper and more accurate than competing technologies.
The "3D Video Immersion Room" is a new tool for education and training with numerous applications. Some examples are as follows: Live 3D Video Teleconferencing, which permits two participants to step into different geographically separated rooms, enabling them to see each other to communicate naturally; Sports Training, which permits an individual to review his or her own athletic performance (a golf or baseball swing, a basketball shot) with a trainer, including overlaying own previous performance or performance of professionals; Historical Reenactment, which uses live or recorded actors and enables students to go to a 3D reconstruction or recreation of a historic place with live actors and/or tour guides.
