Active Vision and Virtual Reality

The experienced quality of virtual reality is currently limited by available computational resources, and will be for some time to come. It is essential that these limited resources not be wasted on the acquisition and processing of data that do not contribute significantly to the final percept. Efficient construction of the intermediate views that are the basis of some forms of virtual reality (telepresence) depends on the proper selection of the acquired views. A fixed array of sensors that afford adequate resolution over the entire scene can present a prohibitive cost in bandwidth and computation while complete sensor mobility is technically difficult to achieve without becoming unacceptably intrusive. Active vision provides a mechanism of effective and efficient resource allocation in the transformation of real scenes into virtual ones. The use of electronic cameras and lenses mounted on positionable platforms (pan and tilt) that can track objects of interest, maintain sharp focus on salient surfaces and zoom in on regions of interest can provide the functional equivalence of a much larger array of fixed sensors.