Tele-Immersion is aimed to enable users in geographically distributed sites to collaborate in real time in a shared simulated environment as if they were in the same physical room. It combines computer vision, graphics and network communications to create joint virtual spaces for each participant at each TI site. As Figure 1 shows, each 3D TI site (UIUC and UCB) consists of Gigabit Ethernet networking that connects an array of 3D cameras, service computing PCs infrastructure, and displays/projectors into a coherent 3D capture and display environment. The TI sites are then connected via Internet2 for bilateral data exchange.

More precisely, the UCB TI site deploys 12 stereo clusters, where each cluster consists of four 2D cameras creating 3D video streams from each cluster (i.e., 48 2D cameras), eight IR pattern projectors to improve the 3D vision reconstruction, three microphones and four speakers, 13 PCs with two or four CPUs, running Windows XP, and two projectors for passive stereo projection, using circular polarization. This physical hardware provides 360 degree video stereo capturing capability, full-body 3D reconstruction, real-time data recording, real-time rendering and networking connectivity via Gigabit Ethernet to Internet 2.

At UIUC, the TI site deploys eight stereo clusters, one microphone and speaker, 11 PCs with two or four CPUs, running Windows XP, two plasma displays and two 3D displays. This physical hardware provides 100 degree video stereo capturing capability, full-body 3D reconstruction, real-time data recording, real-time rendering on multiple displays, and networking connectivity via Gigabit Ethernet to Internet 2. Figure 2 shows the experimental laboratories (left UIUC Laboratory, right UCB Laboratory), which serve as dance studios for the current collaborative dance experiments as described below.