Virtual Hertigate on the Cloud

Duration: 2011-now
Collaborators: Katsushi Ikeuchi, University of Tokyo, Japan
Funding: Strategic Young Researcher Overseas Visits Program for Accelerating Brain Circulation by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Researchers: Yasuhide Okamoto

Description:
Advances of the Internet have enabled us to easily share information with other users. Communication and collaboration tools based on the cloud are efficient and powerful, such as Microsoft LiveMeeting or Google Docs, which enable multiple users to not only share but also edit the same documents interactively. Up to now, the modality of data for such collaborative tools has been limited to documents, images, and slides. Regarding the recent rise in popularity of dense three-dimensional models, we propose an interactive collaborating system that can handle large-scale 3D models.

The proposed system allows users to share, visualize, and interact with large 3D models with other remote users in the common virtual environment. We are considering models with several hundred millions (or more) vertices that are due to their size impractical to be stored locally. We exploit Kinect as a natural user interface (NUI) to provide users with gesture-based control and head-tracking to generate proper viewing locations.In our scenario, we are focusing on archaeological data where advanced 3D visualization opens up new research opportunities; however, the proposed approach has broader impact, such as in applications for 3D design, architecture, tourism etc.

Videos:

Publications:

• Okamoto, Y., Oishi, T., Ikeuchi, K.: Image-Based Network Rendering of Large Meshes for Cloud Computing. International Journal of Computer Vision 94(1): pp. 12-22 (2011)
• Okamoto, Y., Kurillo, G., Oishi, T., Ikeuchi, K., Bajcsy, R.: 3D Remote Collaboration Framework for Virtual Cultural Heritage on the Windows Azure Environment, Cloud Futures: Hot Topics in Research and Education, Berkeley, CA, May 7-8, 2012.