Web Solution for the remote presence in Exhibitions and Showhouses

Informazioni relative al progetto

EFAIRS

ID dell’accordo di sovvenzione: IST-2000-29332

Progetto chiuso

Data di avvio 1 Agosto 2001

Data di completamento 31 Luglio 2003

Finanziato da

• Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on a "User-friendly information society, 1998-2002"

Costo totale € 3 540 139,00

Contributo UE € 1 770 067,00

Coordinato da

INSIDE RIGHT LIMITED
United Kingdom

Risultati finali

Web-based platform that allows for live transmission of fairs, exhibitions and showhouses over the web

E-Fairs comes to offer to exhibitors the service of having real-time or recorded image of their stands transmitted through the web in order to offer a series of product ranges to potential customers. Posting the image of a stand on the web, will allow virtual visitors, i.e. internet users to visit the respective web-sites, view the stands and their exhibits, retrieve relevant information by clicking on the objects of interest and finally use the video-conferencing feature in order to communicate with sales representatives and make real-time queries. The e-Fairs system will greatly apply to the showhouse application where potential house buyers will have the opportunity to virtually visit a showhouse of their interest, see all the rooms and the proposed furniture. Furthermore, the virtual visitor will have the opportunity to alter the colour of predefined objects (for instance, chairs, tables, curtains, carpets, wallpapers) and therefore view the internal of a showhouse with different options. Again, like in the case of fairs, the virtual visitor will have the opportunity to use the video-conferencing feature in order to be connected to a sales representative, either in the showhouse, or in the sales offices. On the technological side and particularly the image processing point of view, the e-Fairs viewer software is open for new advances in technology since the panoramic images that e-Fairs is able to render is based on typical cylindrical panoramic images, which are achievable for nearly every 360° video-camera solution. Therefore, the viewer system does not fundamentally depend on the available BeHere camera system. A minimal adaption of the viewer system to other camera systems will be needed in order to show the images perfectly, if such a decision is taken. At the moment the system supports image resolutions of 2048x512 Pixels. This relies on the video encoding solution that was chosen for the system. In order to support higher resolutions some additional effort has to be done, as soon as a suitable technology is available. The system is based on currently available Windows technology, as it was developed for Windows 2000 /XP/ME etc. For other platforms including future windows platforms the viewer functionality will have to be checked when such platforms become available in order to make it compatible. The updated system according to the quality threshold of the users only comprises an update for the camera hardware. As mentioned above, the video camera system must only be able to provide cylindrical panoramic images. The usage of another camera system only requires little adaption of the e-Fairs software because of different aspect ratios of the camera image, etc. Relevant software adaptations to a new camera system are not recourse intensive and can therefore be performed according to the needs that will arise during commercialisation. Practically, the system comprises of the following components: - The e-Fairs web-client: The e-Fairs Web Client is the e-Fairs system component that presents the omnidirectional video to the end user, as well as the user interface where all the services of the e-Fairs system are integrated (object information, video conferencing etc.) - The e-Fairs Authoring Tool: The e-Fairs Authoring Tool is a simple, dialog-based application that acts as a graphical front-end to the e-Fairs database. The intended users of this application are the personnel that will setup the e-Fairs system at an exhibition site. - The e-Fairs Media Server under Windows 2000: In order to stream the panoramic video to the clients it is necessary to configure the Media Server at the Windows 2000 Server. The server operates optimally on a high-end server system so that a big number of clients can be served. To ensure performance, a server with 2 Intel XEON 2,4GHz; 1GB RAM, 60GB HD (depends on the content that has to be streamed) and a high bandwidth connection to the Internet (DSL is sufficient if only one client is connected) are recommended. All the above components are connected to an omni-directional video-camera which feeds the system with the image. During the set-up of the system, it is necessary to configure and calibrate the beHere camera, and set-up the media encoder.