Anthony DeVincenzi, Lining Yao, Hiroshi Ishii, and Ramesh Raskar. 2011. "Kinected Conference: Augmenting Video Imaging with Calibrated Depth and Audio." In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 621–624. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1958824.1958929

Abstract

The proliferation of broadband and high-speed Internet access has, in general, democratized the ability to commonly engage in videoconference. However, current video systems do not meet their full potential, as they are restricted to a simple display of unintelligent 2D pixels. In this paper we present a system for enhancing distance-based communication by augmenting the traditional video conferencing system with additional attributes beyond two-dimensional video. We explore how expanding a system's understanding of spatially calibrated depth and audio alongside a live video stream can generate semantically rich three-dimensional pixels containing information regarding their material properties and location. We discuss specific scenarios that explore features such as synthetic refocusing, gesture activated privacy, and spatiotemporal graphic augmentation.