Development and trial operation of video teleconference system

The authors have developed and tested a video teleconference system where visual communication can be performed in a telephonelike manner by using a video switching system as its key component. They describe this system and some results in the test operation. The video teleconference system consists of two parts. One is called the audio-visual information processing system (AVIPS), where the newly developed video switching system plays a key role. The switching network and video communication terminals are also included in AVIPS. The other is the reservation processing system (RPS), where personal computers connected to the conventional telephone network are used for making reservations. AVIPS actually performs switching and connecting functions. RPS controls the entire system by managing busy/idle and abnormal status of the various resources in AVIPS as well as making automatic connections requested by users. The results derived are based on point-to-point teleconferencing