Speaker Tracking for Automated Lecture Archiving Using Tagged Microphone

Because of the recent progress of inter-university communication system on the Internet or communication satellite system, lecture archiving system is becoming popular. Since the number of lectures is not small to record them manually by deploying technical staffs for each lecture, lectures are often recorded with a fixed video camera, which is always shooting wide-angle view including a projector screen or a blackboard. This kind of inflexible system might be acceptable when the main purpose of archiving is to record materials or lecture given by a lecturer. However, when the style of the lecture is rather based on communication between a lecturer and students, i.e., lectures that accepts questions, shooting not only the lecturer but also a student in questioning is mandatory to convey full circumstance of the lecture with nonverbal information. We describe a system that enables to track a person in questioning in lecture. By tracking a microphone with IR tag by an IR camera, the position of a person in questioning is tracked and he/she is shot by another visible ray camera synchronized with the IR camera.