A New Remote Camera Work System for Teleconference Using a Combination of Omni-Directional and Network Controlled Cameras

As advent of communication network and multimedia processing technologies, various video conference systems to smoothly communicate each other between remote sites using with high quality audio and video have been developed. However, since those video conference systems usually use conventional cameras which only capture the objective images in one direction with narrow area, wide area such as 360 degree of surround direction cannot be captured. In this paper, we introduce a new teleconference system so called Telegnosis in which omni-directional camera and PTZ (Pan/Tilt/Zoom) are combined. While the omni-directional camera capture 360 degree of surrounding images, the PTZ camera captures more detail images specified by the users in omni-directional panorama images by pan, tilt and zoom operations. Using multiple Telegnosis systems, more flexible and dynamic video conference system can be realized for new application fields.