Benefits of combined active stereo vision and haptic telepresence

This paper presents the theoretical background and the implementation of a real-time interactive stereo vision system including vergence control. The vision system enables human operators to actively observe a remote real environment and allows high-fidelity visual sensing, useful in multi-modal telepresence and teleaction tasks. The use of internet protocol (IP) communication technology facilitates the application of the system in most wide area communication infrastructures. Evaluation experiments demonstrate the benefits of interactive stereo vision with respect to improved human task performance.