Holographic and 3D teleconferencing and visualization: implications for terabit networked applications

Abstract not available

Network streaming and compression for mixed reality tele-immersion

Bulterman, D.C.A. [Promotor]Cesar, P.S. [Copromotor

Collaborative virtual reality platform for visualizing space data and mission planning

This paper presents the system architecture of a collaborative virtual environment in which distributed multidisciplinary teams involved in space exploration activities come together and explore areas of scientific interest of a planet for future missions. The aim is to reduce the current challenges of distributed scientific and engineering meetings that prevent the exploitation of their collaborative potential, as, at present, expertise, tools and datasets are fragmented. This paper investigates the functional characteristics of a software framework that addresses these challenges following the design science research methodology in the context of the space industry and research. An implementation of the proposed architecture and a validation process with end users, based on the execution of different use cases, are described. These use cases cover relevant aspects of real science analysis and operation, including planetary data visualization, as the system aims at being used in future European missions. This validation suggests that the system has the potential to enhance the way space scientists will conduct space science research in the future

Offshore marine visualization

In 85 B.C. a Greek philosopher called Posidonius set sail to answer an age-old question: how deep is the ocean? By lowering a large rock tied to a very long length of rope he determined that the ocean was 2km deep. These line and sinker methods were used until the 1920s when oceanographers developed the first echo sounders that could measure the water's depth by reflecting sound waves off the seafloor. The subsequent increase in sonar depth soundings resulted in oceanologists finally being able to view the alien underwater landscape. Paper printouts and records dominated the industry for decades until the mid 1980s when new digital sonar systems enabled computers to process and render the captured data streams.In the last five years, the offshore industry has been particularly slow to take advantage of the significant advancements made in computer and graphics technologies. Contemporary marine visualization systems still use outdated 2D representations of vessels positioned on digital charts and the potential for using 3D computer graphics for interacting with multidimensional marine data has not been fully investigated.This thesis is concerned with the issues surrounding the visualization of offshore activities and data using interactive 3D computer graphics. It describes the development of a novel 3D marine visualization system and subsequent study of marine visualization techniques through a number of offshore case studies that typify the marine industry. The results of this research demonstrate that presenting the offshore engineer or office based manager with a more intuitive and natural 3D computer generated viewing environment enables complex offshore tasks, activities and procedures to be more readily monitored and understood. The marine visualizations presented in this thesis take advantage of recent advancements in computer graphics technology and our extraordinary ability to interpret 3D data. These visual enhancements have improved offshore staffs' spatial and temporal understanding of marine data resulting in improved planning, decision making and real-time situation awareness of complex offshore data and activities

Immersive interconnected virtual and augmented reality : a 5G and IoT perspective

Despite remarkable advances, current augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications are a largely individual and local experience. Interconnected AR/VR, where participants can virtually interact across vast distances, remains a distant dream. The great barrier that stands between current technology and such applications is the stringent end-to-end latency requirement, which should not exceed 20 ms in order to avoid motion sickness and other discomforts. Bringing AR/VR to the next level to enable immersive interconnected AR/VR will require significant advances towards 5G ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and a Tactile Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we articulate the technical challenges to enable a future AR/VR end-to-end architecture, that combines 5G URLLC and Tactile IoT technology to support this next generation of interconnected AR/VR applications. Through the use of IoT sensors and actuators, AR/VR applications will be aware of the environmental and user context, supporting human-centric adaptations of the application logic, and lifelike interactions with the virtual environment. We present potential use cases and the required technological building blocks. For each of them, we delve into the current state of the art and challenges that need to be addressed before the dream of remote AR/VR interaction can become reality

Correlated multi-streaming in distributed interactive multimedia systems

Distributed Interactive Multimedia Environments (DIMEs) enable geographically distributed people to interact with each other in a joint media-rich virtual environment for a wide range of activities, such as art performance, medical consultation, sport training, etc. The real-time collaboration is made possible by exchanging a set of multi-modal sensory streams over the network in real time. The characterization and evaluation of such multi-stream interactive environments is challenging because the traditional Quality of Service metrics (e.g., delay, jitter) are limited to a per stream basis. In this work, we present a novel ???Bundle of Streams??? concept to de???ne correlated multi-streams in DIMEs and present new cyber-physical, spatio-temporal QoS metrics to measure QoS over bundle of streams. We realize Bundle of Streams concept by presenting a novel paradigm of Bundle Streaming as a Service (SAS). We propose and develop SAS Kernel, a generic, distributed, modular and highly ???exible streaming kernel realizing SAS concept. We validate the Bundle of Streams model by comparing the QoS performance of bundle of streams over different transport protocols in a 3D tele-immersive testbed. Also, further experiments demonstrate that the SAS Kernel incurs low overhead in delay, CPU, and bandwidth demands

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions