My take on CNN hologram

Since every Tom, Dick, and Harry is talking about CNN hologram, I thought I would also write something about it (without parenthesizing the word hologram with quotation marks, that is). Clearly, there are two camps out there: one that is too amazed by the cool technology, and the other which thinks it was horrendous. When I saw it on TV, I oscillated between the two camps, but, eventually, unsubscribed from both of them.

The CNN hologram reminded me of the system that CMU deployed at Superbowl in 2001. Prof. Takeo Kanade gave a talk at CVPR'06 in NYC. I was totally amazed by learning the details of this system: hundreds of cameras installed all around the field, miles of wires, numerous computers -- all synchronized to produce the cool technology. A true engineering marvel! It might be a very far stretch to draw similarities between the two systems, and I am not trying to do that; it is just that CMU's system was the first thing that came to my mind. Anyways, as compared to this system, CNN hologram acquisition setting appears rather miniature in terms of the complexity of both the scene and the tracking issues. I am not sure if in the Superbowl system, the vision problems were circumvented by the over-constrained camera systems, but (to me) that definitely appears to be the case in the hologram system.

One technology that I would like to see in near future (and I believe the required positive research results exist) is better processing of audio signal, mostly when SNR is very low. In particular, when the journalists were reporting amidst the crowd, even though they were shouting at the top of their lungs, the signal was inaudible. I think, with the state-of-the-art audio processing techniques, this problem should be manageable.

I think what I wish to see in future is a clearer audio signal and less constrained settings for the hologram acquisition. In other words, I wish to see the person "beamed" directly from outdoors (as opposed to from inside a customized trailer), which I suppose will open a can of "vision-related" worms (problems).

That said, I am very excited to see the fast transition of the research in vision, signal processing, and human computer interface into mainstream / popular technology. No matter how hard the cynics lambaste/ridicule these demonstrations, there is no doubt that these things are inspiring a lot of young and creative minds.