PTZ Control of a Remote Camera with Head Tracking

Summary

Inspired by the exciting project of Parallax Augmented Desktop, we aim in this project to create a user interface for controlling Pan/Tilt/Zoom parameters of a remote camera with a motion of viewer's head. With such an interface, we can introduce a wider field of view into video conferencing just using a flat panel display and a cheap webcam. The technological challenges are a method to capture a wide field of view and a method to detect a face in real time for view synthesis. The experimental setup utilizes a fisheye camera and face detection algorithm with Haar-like features for this purpose, and shows good performance with a regular laptop PC.

Fisheye remote camera

View synthesis

View 1

View 2

Movies

References

1. Kota Yamaguchi, Takashi Komuro, Masatoshi Ishikawa: PTZ Control with Head Tracking for Video Chat, ACM CHI (CHI2009) (Boston, 2009.4.6) / Extended Abstracts. [Paper]
2. Kota Yamaguchi, Yoshihiro Watanabe, Takashi Komuro, Masatoshi Ishikawa: An Interface for Peering inside Remote Field of View, The 13th Image Media Processing Symposium (IMPS2008) (Izu, 2008.10.31) / Proceedings, pp. 83-84. [Paper] [Poster] (only available in Japanese) Best poster award!