SBIR Phase I: Integrating the Physical Environment into Remote Collaboration

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力源于正在开发的技术将空间维度整合到基于视频的通信工具中的潜力，使人们能够与远程参与者共享他们的物理空间，然后远程参与者可以独立探索和注释这些空间，从而为远程协作提供新的机会。这项创新的商业影响可能是巨大的。这种空间远程协作技术可以在广泛的应用中找到实际用途，例如远程维修、培训和指导、灾害/紧急情况、房地产和许多其他应用。更具吸引力的远程协作工具可以为人们带来新的机会，让他们以一种基于音频和视频的通信无法实现的方式，丰富地体验远程活动并分享个人体验。这些远程协作功能可以显著改善欠发达和服务不足的社区参与特定地点活动的机会，包括远程医疗评估、远程学习，以及在旅行费用高得令人望而却步的情况下参与。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目致力于在NSF资助的先前研究的基础上，开发引人注目的、以用户为中心的技术，在用户周围的物理空间对交互非常重要的环境中支持远程协作。研究计划侧重于先前工作中没有涉及但对该技术商业化很重要的两个具体方面：空间建模的初始化和动态场景的处理。该提案提出了看似合理的解决方案，并详细说明了探索这两个问题的个别解决方案和组合的计划，以便为用户提供一个只需最少的额外努力或重点即可使用的系统。拟议研究的结果包括针对这两个关键问题的解决路径和一个原型系统，该系统实现了基于空间的远程协作，而不会让用户受到系统级细节的困扰，同时允许他们专注于手头的任务。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project results from the potential for the technologies being developed to incorporate the spatial dimension into video-based communication tools, allowing people to share their physical spaces with remote participants, who can then independently explore and annotate these spaces, providing new opportunities for remote collaboration. The commercial impact of this innovation is potentially substantial. Such spatial telecollaboration technologies could find practical use in a wide range of applications, such as remote repair, training and instruction, disaster/emergency situations, real estate, and many others. More compelling remote collaboration tools can open up new opportunities for people to richly experience remote events and to share personal experiences in a way that audio- and video-based communications cannot achieve. These telecollaboration capabilities can significantly improve opportunities for underdeveloped and underserved communities to participate in location-specific events and activities, including remote medical assessment, remote learning, and participation in situations where travel is prohibitively expensive.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project endeavors to build on prior NSF-funded research to develop compelling, user-centered technologies that support remote collaboration in contexts where the physical space around the user is important to the interaction. The research plan focuses on two specific aspects that have not been addressed in prior work but are important to commercialization of the technology: initialization of the spatial modeling and handling of dynamic scenes. The proposal suggests plausible solutions and details plans to explore individual solutions and combinations for both problems, in order to provide users with a system that requires minimal additional effort or focus to employ. The results of the proposed research include a solution path for both of these key issues and a prototype system that implements remote spatial-based collaboration without encumbering the users with system-level details, while allowing them to focus on the tasks at hand.