Collaborative teleoperation using networked spatial dynamic voting

We describe a networked teleoperation system that allows groups of participants to collaboratively explore live remote environments. Participants collaborate using a spatial dynamic voting (SDV) interface that allows them to vote on a sequence of images via a network such as the Internet. The SDV interface runs on each client computer and communicates with a central server that collects, displays, and analyzes time sequences of spatial votes. The results are conveyed to the "tele-actor", a skilled human with cameras and microphones who navigates and performs actions in the remote environment. This paper formulates analysis in terms of spatial interest functions and consensus regions, and presents system architecture, interface, and algorithms for processing voting data.