3D Tele-Collaboration Over Internet2

Our long-term vision is to provide a better every-day working envi- ronment, with high-fidelity scene reconstruction for life-sized 3D tele- collaboration. In particular, we want to provide the user with a true sense of presence with our remote collaborator and their real surroundings, and the ability to share and interact with 3D documents. The challenges re- lated to this vision are enormous and involve many technical tradeoffs, particularly in scene reconstruction. In this paper we present a significant step toward our ultimate goal. By assembling the best of available hardware and software technologies in scene reconstruction, rendering, and distributed scene graph software, members of the National Tele-Immersion Initiative (NTII) are able to demonstrate 3D collaborative, tele-presence over Internet2 between col- leagues in remote offices.