Immersive 3D Communication

Wanmin Wu, Cha Zhang

Abstract: The last few decades have witnessed tremendous advances in telecommunication, with the invention of technologies such as radio, telephone, voice-over-IP, and video conferencing. While all these communication tools are useful and valuable, the ultimate goal of telecommunication is to enable fully immersive remote interaction in a way that simulates or even surpasses the face-to-face experience. Immersive 3D communication technologies are developed aiming at that goal. The objective of this tutorial is to present an overview of the recent advances in immersive 3D communication. Topics include the basics of human 3D perception, new systems and algorithms in real-time 3D scene capture and reconstruction, 3D data compression and dissemination, 3D displays, etc. We intend to provide insights into the latest immersive 3D communication technologies, and highlight some open research challenges for the future.