A waist-mounted ProCam system for remote collaboration

We propose a waist-mounted projector-camera (ProCam) system for asymmetric remote collaboration. A wearable camera is often used to transmit a worker's situation to a remote instructor, however 3D structure of the worker's environment is not always available and the instructor has a minimal flexibility in changing the camera's viewpoint. A stationary 3D measurement system is also commonly used for remote collaboration, however a narrow measurement area and occlusion from a worker's body can be a severe problem. Our waist-mounted ProCam system reconstructs worker's environment in real-time without occlusion from the worker's body. The remote instructor can give instructions simply by drawing annotations on the reconstructed environment on screen, and they are properly projected in front of the worker. Structured-light based reconstruction, vision-based localization, and visual annotation projection, are processed synchronously with a camera and modified shutter glasses so that both the camera and the worker observe only the information they need. Experimental results show that users prefer our system to a stationary ProCam system.