Telepresence Robot with Novel Stereoscopic Camera Configuration

Abstract

A novel stereoscopic camera configuration which has two movable wide-lens cameras and one stationary fisheye-lens camera is proposed to build ”view-sharing” telepresence robot for multiple users. The camera system provide 180-deg monocular field-of-view obtained from the stationary fish-eye camera for more than two users, and provide additional stereoscopic information of parallax for at most two users independently. The parallax is obtained from the movable cameras which revolves around the fish-eye camera according to each user’s head motion so that the inter-lens distance keeps constant length, and stereoscopic view of remote environment is provides for each user. We demonstrate some applications using the proposed system such as body-sharing experience, joint attention via shared-view, and improvement of sense of presence.