Pictures on the Internet: Infrastructure Architecture and Application Examples

Paul Cooper, Ph.D.

The next generation(s) of computing and communication infrastructure will primarily serve to communicate and process pictures and video. Based on real examples and live demos drawn primarily from a successful Internet startup I founded, I will discuss existing distributed architectures for acquisition, processing and display of images and video. Alternatives and challenges will be discussed, and I will illustrate some of the real uses for image data on the net. My demos will include live video and time-lapsed archives of industrial construction, video-telepresence-base d based on time-shared ptz cameras, panoramas stitched in cylindrical coordinates from calibrated imaging systems, and (at least pictures of) live pictures on cell phones. I'll point out a few interesting open problems associated with real applications.