About NTII

Overview

Tele-Immersion (National Tele-immersion Initiative - NTII) will enable users at geographically distributed sites to collaborate in real time in a shared, simulated environment as if they were in the same physical room. It is the ultimate synthesis of networking and media technologies to enhance collaborative environments.

In a tele-immersive environment computers recognize the presence and movements of individuals and objects, track those individuals and images, and then permit them to be projected in realistic, multiple, geographically distributed immersive environments on stereo-immersive surfaces. This requires sampling and resynthesis of the physical environment as well as the users' faces and bodies, which is a new challenge that will move the range of emerging technologies, such as scene depth extraction and warp rendering, to the next level. Tele-immersive environments will therefore facilitate not only interaction between users themselves but also between users and computer-generated models. This will require expanding the boundaries of computer vision, tracking, display, and rendering technologies. As a result, all of this will enable users to achieve a compelling experience and it will lay the groundwork for a higher degree of the their inclusion into the entire system.

This new paradigm for human-computer interaction falls into the category of the most advanced network applications and, as such, it is the ultimate technical challenge for Internet2. Further, a secondary objective is to accelerate the development of better tools for research and educational collaboration and promote advances in virtual environment research, which means that this plan will be woven into the fabric of many of the Next Generation Internet applications.

The role of Advanced Network & Services

To ensure that these new distributed immersive environments become a reality, Advanced Network & Services has acted as a catalyst in bringing together recognized experts in virtual reality and networking, led by VR pioneer Jaron Lanier. Our goal is, therefore, to identify the issues, develop plans to build a national tele-immersive research infrastructure, produce a realistic R&D agenda, and actively participate in the creation of the key technologies.

Therefore, Advanced Network & Services efforts in the area can be thought of as a national insurance policy to make sure that we will not be hindered in the future by inadequate standards or improper infrastructure decisions that could have been avoided. Tele-Immersion research will be an objective voice and a factual basis for the creation of the networks of the future.

Chief Scientist: Senior Computer Science Researcher: Project Co-ordinator: Software Developer:

Jaron Lanier Amela Sadagic Denise Ondayko Marlone Brown