I-Corps: Low-Cost Holographic TelePresence System

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to commercialize a low-cost holographic telepresence system for the professional sports industry. The system can effectively improve performance and reduce the cost for the sports clubs and coaches in recruiting and training athletes from anywhere in the world. The holographic telepresence may significantly improve the efficiency of remote working and online training and spur new use cases and services improving quality of life. Through this project, the team aims to translate their fundamental research on ubiquitous machine vision systems to the market place via customer discovery. The team plans to integrate the knowledge learned from this project into their courses, senior design projects, and the mentoring of graduate students. In this way, they will cultivate next-generation engineers and researchers who can translate technologies into commercial products and help grow the economy. This I-Corps project explores the commercial potential of a low-cost holographic telepresence system. The holographic telepresence system involves core technologies from advanced wireless communications, edge computing systems, and computer vision. The current market segment for this project is the sports industry, specifically collegiate sports and professional gymnasiums. The outcomes of the project will provide insights into the commercialization of new technologies that enable future holographic communication systems including multi-camera intelligent fusion methods that reliably construct the point cloud (a set of data points in space) from multiple cameras with temporal consistency, real-time adaptive point cloud compression and transmission methods that efficiently compress the point cloud based on the requirement of the service quality, and real-time network-aware artificial intelligence (AI)-powered point cloud reconstruction and transmission that can be efficiently transmitted to the smart mixed reality (MR) glass via wireless links.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.