The telepresence integrated interactive intermedia facility

Abstract

The iiif system is a base to support the use of interactive media. It is intended to serve as the utility on which a number of interactive media services are based. Examples of the types of services that the facility is intended to support include a media space, a video document handling system and, of course, traditional video conferencing. The iiif system has the dual purpose of providing a base utility to support re-searchers, and is the subject of research in and of itself. The general research objec-tive is to investigate how multimedia technology can be applied to support HCI research objectives, including the support of cooperative work. The hub of the utility consists of computer controllable A/V equipment, computer controlled A/V switches (much like telephone switches) and a server computer to provide control. The server computer is accessible to people at workstations through the same networks used for other electronic communications. The iiif system originated at Rank Xerox's EuroPARC laboratory in 1988. It was given to the Cavecat project at the University of Toronto in early 1990. The server was adopted by the CAVECAT project as the basis for its media space. The iiif server along with other CAVECAT resources were transfered to the Ontario Telepresence Project at the University of Toronto. This note documents the current state of iiif evolution at the University of Toronto. The design includes server software, device support, network communications and client stub implementations for common workstations. It does not inciude a user interface for the administrator or the users of the facility. The iiif server provides the infrastructure necessary for other servers to function. The Smart Server uses the information within iiif in order to update a user's interface with a correct representation of the state of the media space. The Video and Voice servers will use iiif to retrieve and present different tvpes of media clips such as snapshots of a person's office or speech through iiif's audio visual network. The iiif server is written in C. There are approximately 38,000 lines of code divided into operation specific modules. Berkley System Unix is the operating system for which the iiif server has been developed.