Abstract:
Telepresence has the potential to bring billions of people into artificial reality
(AR/MR/VR). It is the next step in the evolution of telecommunication, from telegraphy to
telephony to videoconferencing. In this talk, I will describe early steps taken at FRL Pittsburgh
towards achieving photorealistic telepresence: realtime social interactions in AR/VR with
avatars that look like you, move like you, and sound like you. If successful, photorealistic
telepresence will introduce pressure for the concurrent development of the next generation of
algorithms and computing platforms for computer vision and computer graphics. In particular, I
will introduce codec avatars : the use of neural networks to unify the computer vision
(inference) and computer graphics (rendering) problems in signal transmission and reception.
The creation of codec avatars require capture systems of unprecedented 3D sensing resolution,
which I will also describe.