Semi-Automated Creation of Converged iTV Services: From Macromedia Director Simulations to Services Ready for Broadcast

While sound and video may capture viewers' attention, interaction can captivate them. This has not been available prior to the advent of Digital Television. In fact, what lies at the heart of the Digital Television revolution is this new type of interactive content, offered in the form of interactive Television (iTV) services. On top of that, the new world of converged networks has created a demand for a new type of converged services on a range of mobile terminals (Tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile phones). This paper aims at presenting a new approach to service creation that allows for the semi-automatic translation of simulations and rapid prototypes created in the accessible desktop multimedia authoring package Macromedia Director into services ready for broadcast. This is achieved by a series of tools that de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces (UI) and applications for mobile terminals. The benefits of rapid prototyping are essential for the production of these new types of services, and are therefore discussed in the first section of this paper. In the following sections, an overview of the operation of content, service, creation and management sub-systems is presented, which illustrates why these tools compose an important and integral part of a system responsible of creating, delivering and managing converged broadcast and telecommunications services. The next section examines a number of metadata languages candidates for describing the iTV services user interface and the schema language adopted in this project. A detailed description of the operation of the two tools is provided to offer an insight of how they can be used to de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces and applications for mobile terminals. Finally, representative broadcast oriented and telecommunication oriented converged service components are also introduced, demonstrating how these tools have been used to generate different types of services.

Automatic Data Normalization and Parameterization for Optical Motion Tracking

Methods for optical motion capture often require timeconsuming manual processing before the data can be used for subsequent tasks such as retargeting or character animation. These processing steps restrict the applicability of motion capturing especially for dynamic VR-environments with real time requirements. To solve these problems, we present two additional, fast and automatic processing stages based on our motion capture pipeline presented in [HSK05]. A normalization step aligns the recorded coordinate systems with the skeleton structure to yield a common and intuitive data basis across different recording sessions. A second step computes a parameterization based on automatically extracted main movement axes to generate a compact motion description. Our method does not restrict the placement of marker bodies nor the recording setup, and only requires a short calibration phase.

Verfahren und Anlage zum automatisierten Kommissionieren von in Beuteln verpackten Gütern

Automatisiertes Kommissionieren von biegeschlaffen Teilen stellt seit jeher ein besonderes Problem für die Handhabungstechnik dar, und es sind bisher verschiedenartigste sondermaschinenbauliche Lösungen hervorgebracht worden. Auch für das Kommissionieren von in Folien verpackten Artikeln gibt es einige L��sungen. Diese sind aber hinsichtlich ihrer Anwendung für in Beuteln verpackte Güter eingeschränkt. Ein neuartiges, am Fraunhofer-IML entwickeltes Verfahren verspricht Abhilfe. Der folgende Beitrag stellt dieses Verfahren im Detail vor und zeigt vergangene und zukünftige Untersuchungsfelder auf, die im Rahmen der Entwicklung bearbeitet wurden bzw. werden und sich insbesondere mit der Dimensionierung der Gerätschaften und Hilfsmittel beschäftigen.

Increasing Realism and Supporting Content Planning for Dynamic Scenes in a Mixed Reality System incorporating a Time-of-Flight Camera

For broadcasting purposes MIXED REALITY, the combination of real and virtual scene content, has become ubiquitous nowadays. Mixed Reality recording still requires expensive studio setups and is often limited to simple color keying. We present a system for Mixed Reality applications which uses depth keying and provides threedimensional mixing of real and artificial content. It features enhanced realism through automatic shadow computation which we consider a core issue to obtain realism and a convincing visual perception, besides the correct alignment of the two modalities and correct occlusion handling. Furthermore we present a possibility to support placement of virtual content in the scene. Core feature of our system is the incorporation of a TIME-OF-FLIGHT (TOF)-camera device. This device delivers real-time depth images of the environment at a reasonable resolution and quality. This camera is used to build a static environment model and it also allows correct handling of mutual occlusions between real and virtual content, shadow computation and enhanced content planning. The presented system is inexpensive, compact, mobile, flexible and provides convenient calibration procedures. Chroma-keying is replaced by depth-keying which is efficiently performed on the GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT (GPU) by the usage of an environment model and the current ToF-camera image. Automatic extraction and tracking of dynamic scene content is herewith performed and this information is used for planning and alignment of virtual content. An additional sustainable feature is that depth maps of the mixed content are available in real-time, which makes the approach suitable for future 3DTV productions. The presented paper gives an overview of the whole system approach including camera calibration, environment model generation, real-time keying and mixing of virtual and real content, shadowing for virtual content and dynamic object tracking for content planning.