VASC Seminar Announcement
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Date: Wednesday, 1/19/00
Time: 3:30-4:30
Place: NSH 4110 Corridor (outside of Takeo's Office)

Speaker:  Robert Stockton (Just Research)
		Rahul Sukthankar (Just Research & Robotics Institute, CMU)
		Matthew Mullin (Just Research)

Title: Camera Assisted Presentation Systems

Abstract:

With the advent of affordable LCD projection systems, computers have
become the preferred tool for giving interesting, dynamic presentations.
However, computer-based presentations have retained two significant
limitations from traditional slide presentation systems:  (1) unless
the projector is carefully aligned to the screen, the audience must
settle for a distorted projection; (2) presentation control requires the
speaker to focus attention on the presentation apparatus, rather than
the presentation itself.

Our camera assisted presentation system eliminates both of these
limitations by employing a low-priced computer camera aimed at the
projection screen.  The three major components of this system will
be discussed:

1) Automatic keystone correction: the LCD projector may be mounted
   almost anywhere in the room, yet the presentation image is
   perfectly rectangular and precisely aligned to the screen.
 
2) Pointer-based presentation control: the speaker controls the
   presentation using a laser pointer or other pointing device.

3) Self-calibration: the camera assisted presentation system requires
   no manual calibration even though the positions, orientations and
   focal lengths of both the projector and the camera are unknown.
 
The talk will be given using our prototype presentation system.

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