Section: Application Domains

Networked visual applications

3D and Free Viewpoint TV: The emergence of multi-view auto-stereoscopic displays has spurred a recent interest for broadcast or Internet delivery of 3D video to the home. Multiview video, with the help of depth information on the scene, allows scene rendering on immersive stereo or auto-stereoscopic displays for 3DTV applications. It also allows visualizing the scene from any viewpoint, for scene navigation and free-viewpoint TV (FTV) applications. However, the large volumes of data associated to multi-view video plus depth content raise new challenges in terms of compression and communication.

Internet and mobile video: Broadband fixed (ADSL, ADSL2$+$) and mobile access networks with different radio access technologies (RAT) (e.g. 3G/4G, GERAN, UTRAN, DVB-H), have enabled not only IPTV and Internet TV but also the emergence of mobile TV and mobile devices with internet capability. A major challenge for next internet TV or internet video remains to be able to deliver the increasing variety of media (including more and more bandwidth demanding media) with a sufficient end-to-end QoS (Quality of Service) and QoE (Quality of Experience).

Mobile video retrieval: The Internet has changed the ways of interacting with content. The user is shifting its media consumption from a passive to a more interactive mode, from linear broadcast (TV) to on demand content (YouTubes, iTunes, VoD), and to user-generated, searching for relevant, personalized content. New mobility and ubiquitous usage has also emerged. The increased power of mobile devices is making content search and retrieval applications using mobile phones possible. Quick access to content in mobile environments with restricted bandwidth resources will benefit from rate-efficient feature extraction and description.

Wireless multi-camera vision systems: Our activities on scene modelling, on rate-efficient feature description, distributed coding and compressed sensing should also lead to algorithmic building blocks relevant for wireless multi-camera vision systems, for applications such as visual surveillance and security.