Section: Software

Platforms

The Grimage platform

The Grimage platform is an experimental laboratory dedicated to multi-media applications of computer vision. It hosts a multiple-camera system connected to a PC cluster, as well as to a multi-video projection system. This laboratory is shared by several research groups, most proeminently PERCEPTION and MOAIS. In particular, Grimage allows challenging real-time immersive applications based on computer vision and interactions between real and virtual objects, Figure 1 .

Figure 1. Left: The Grimage platform allows immersive/interactive applications such as this one. The real character is reconstruced in real-time and immersed in a virtual world, such that he/she can interact with virtual objects. Right: The mini-Grimage platform holds on a table top. It uses six cameras connected to six mini-PCs and to a laptop.

The mini-Grimage platform

We also deveoped a miniaturized version of Grimage. Based on the same algorithms and software, this mini-Grimage platform can hold on a desk top and/or can be used for various experiments involving fast and realistic 3-D reconstruction of objects, Figure 1 .

Virtualization Gate

Vgate is a new immersive environment that allows full-body immersion and interaction with virtual worlds. It is a joint initiative of computer scientists from computer vision, parallel computing and computer graphics from several research groups at INRIA Grenoble Rhône-Alpes, and in collaboation with the company 4D View Solutions. The PERCEPTION team is leading this project. Vgate was demonstrated at Siggraph'09. [41]

POPEYE: an audiovisual robotic head

We have developed an audiovisual (AV) robot head that supports software for AV fusion based on binocular vision and binaural audition (see below). The vision module is composed of two digital cameras that form a stereoscopic pair with control of vergence (one rotational degree of freedom per camera). The auditory module is composed of two microphones. The head can perform pan and tilt rotations as well. All the sensors are linked to a PC. POPEYE computes ITD (interaural time difference) signals at 100 Hz and stereo disparities at 15 Hz. These audio and visual observations are then fused by a AV clustering technique. POPEYE has been developed within the European project POP (http://perception.inrialpes.fr/POP in collaboration with the project-team MISTIS and with two other POP partners: the Speech and Hearing group of the University of Sheffield and the Institute for Systems and Robotics of the University of Coimbra.