Integrated Real-Time Free-Viewpoint Video Communications

FVV allows the user to freely move around the scene, navigating along an arbitrary trajectory as if a virtual camera could be positioned anywhere. Typically, any FVV system requires three main blocks: (i) a volumetric video acquisition stage; (ii) a compression and transmission module; and (iii) a view synthesis block. On the other hand, there is a need to endow the huge domain of XR applications with instantaneous information from remote environments that could be blended with the local ones. Thus, this proposal considers a required intermediate step towards an end-to-end real-time immersive system for remote telepresence, where people located in a remote environment will be merged into a shared XR environment. So, users wearing Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) will be able to navigate freely within prespecified zones in the virtual environment (i.e. constrained omnidirectional 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF)). This way, the user can look at the remote people from different angles as they all were sharing the same space.