Distributed automatic camera control system tracking markers for distance education

We have developed an automatic camera control system for distance education. The system can calculate the 3D position and orientation of a marker by using the ARToolkit library, which is a software library for building augmented reality applications. It can track a target indicated by the visual marker. According to the 3D position and orientation of the marker that is recognized, the system controls a pan/tilt/zoom video camera to track a target indicated by the 3D position and orientation of the recognized marker. Our system has functions such as marker prioritization, 3D marker offsets, and automatic position reset. These functions can alleviate the workload of lecturers who conduct lectures independently. Our system is based on distributed processing through IP multicasting, and flexibly supports various hardware configurations.