Real world video avatar

The presentation of a human figure is an important topic of research with respect to the application of virtual reality technology to support communication and collaboration. In this paper, an approach to transmitting and presenting the figure of a person at a remote location in real time, an implementation of a prototype system based on this approach, and the evaluation of the prototype system using the approach are described. In our approach, images of a person are captured from all around using multiple cameras, transmitted through a network, and displayed on a revolving flat panel display that is capable of presenting different images according to the orientation of the viewing position; the revolving display presents each image so that it is visible exclusively at the orientation from which it was taken, and consequently, an image of the person that can be viewed from various directions is realized. Through the implementation of the prototype system and experiments, it was confirmed that the proposed approach is feasible and that the prototype system functions effectively.