Visual servoing of presenters in augmented virtual reality TV studios

This paper presents recent developments in the area of visual tracking methodologies for an applied real-time person localization system, which primary aims to robust and failure-safe robotic camera control. We applied the described methods to virtual-reality TV broadcasting studio environments in Germany in order to close a gap in TV studio automation. The presented approach uses robot camera systems based on industrial robots in order to allow high-precision camera manipulation for virtual TV studios, without limiting the degrees of freedom that a robot manipulator can provide. To take robotic automation in TV studios to a completely new dimension, we have imparted intelligence to the system by tracking the TV presenter in real-time, allowing him or her to move naturally and freely within the TV studio, while maintaining the required scene parameters, such as position in the scene, zoom, focus, etc. according to prior defined scene behaviors. The tracking system itself is distributed and has proven to be scalable to multiple robotic camera systems operating synchronously in real-world studios.