Features
Videoconferencing’s next generation
You can't get much higher tech than Klara Nahrstedt's research on 3-D video
distributed over Internet2. The Urbana-based computer scientist is working
with Ruzena Bajcsy, a University of California, Berkeley, computer scientist
on videoconferencing's next generation. It's called TEEVE, or Tele-immersive
Environments for EVErybody. 
Technically, TEEVE is a distributed multi-tier application that uses 3-D cameras to capture images and send them over Internet2, a network reserved for the highest of high-tech academic, research and corporate users.
TEEVE's surprising zinger is that the researchers are putting together big, 3-D, over-the-Internet video, and it's inexpensive. That's because TEEVE relies on COTS, or commercial off-the-shelf equipment.
"TEEVE is a great technology because it allows for more cost-effective cyberspace communication of people in their full body size," Nahrstedt says. "The system is especially well suited for learning new activities, training and meeting in cyberspace if a physical activity is to be performed."
Nahrstedt and her Berkeley colleague set the video bar high in their tech tests, synchronizing the steps and spins of two dancers from the two campuses in cyberspace.
That's a big technological step up from today's slightly jerky, talking-head, video-over-the-Internet exchanges. But, more important than improved video quality, Nahrstedt says, are the new applications that could truly improve people's lives. Some examples include telemedicine, instruction in sports and other physical activities and entertainment. The latter is ideally suited as a use for the new system.
"With TEEVE, we want to allow distributed artists such as dancers to train, design new choreography and experiment with different movements in the cyberspace," she says.
The next research steps are to integrate better technology into TEEVE and at the same time make the user-technology interface less complex than programming a VCR. Nahrstedt says in five to six years users should be able to tune in.
Reporting by Melissa Mitchell, Urbana News Bureau
Learn more>> News Bureau release; Department of Computer Science faculty page