ShareCam

Dezhen Song and Ken Goldberg et al. 
Credits and Contact Info.
<Summer 2002 ~ > 
ALPHA Lab, University of California, Berkeley. 
 


Abstract:

We are developing network-based applications for education, journalism and entertainment where many users share control of a single physical resource. Our latest project, "Sharecam",is a single robotic pan, tilt, zoom digital camera. In this paper we describe algorithms for controlling the camera frame based on independent requests from online users. We propose a metric for the degree of satisfaction for each user and formulate frame selection as an optimization problem. We propose a computational geometry-based algorithm and its distrbuted version. For n users, the algorithm runs in O(n^2) time. Its distributed versions run in O(n) time at client side and in O(n log n) at server side time. See www.tele-actor.net/sharecam for details.

 

Camera Control Interface

Sharecam's collaborative camera control interface on the Internet. Each Internet-based user loads two image windows. The lower window is a fixed image of the camera's reachable range of view. Each user requests a camera frame by positioning a dashed rectangle in the lower window. Based on these requests, the algorithm computes an optimal camera frame (shown with solid rectangle), moves the camera accordingly, and displays the resulting live image in the upper window. Requests and camera frames are updated every 10 seconds.

Publications:

  • Exact and Distributed Algorithms for Collaborative Camera Control, D. Song, A.F. v/d Stappen, K. Goldberg Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, December, 2002, Nice, France

Acknowledge:

    This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under IIS-0113147.