Great article in the Beeb News about a research project which is actually reaping great benefits.

For years - I believe one of the things holding up video conferencing was that the viewer sees the other person either looking up or to the see - there’s no eye contact, as the camera on the others side is NOT the screen. This creates a very disturbing anomaly that (IMHO) has prevented everyone but very geeky people to utilize this breakthrough technology.

So now…….

i2i, in development at Microsoft’s research lab in Cambridge, UK, is a two-camera system which very carefully follows an individual’s movement.

It uses a specially developed algorithm to fuse what each camera sees to create an accurate stereo “cyclopean” image.

This means it looks as if users are looking each other in the eye. It can also display floating 3D emoticons.

“We were able to come up with an algorithm that was able to take two images and capture a corresponding map in 3D,” said Antonio Criminisi, lead researcher of Microsoft’s Machine Learning and Perception Group.

“Using this powerful technology, we can now synthetically create an image as if the person is looking at you.”

I don’t necessarily buy the synthetic character angle, but just getting cameras to show you eye contact is huge….

So whwther or not thsi works - will depend on the issue of “are peopel willing to trade off and NOT see teh actual human (but a synthetic one) - all for the purpos eof seeing that person - in the eye.

But WAIT@! It’s a synthetic person, so why….

[via techdirt]

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