Demonstrating project MAESTRO at VRST’99
Project description
MAESTRO develops the use of telepresence for the maintenance, the installation and the repair of mechanical and electromechanical machinery. The MAESTRO solution is particularly dedicated to the training of complex maintenance/installation scenarios for remote users, such as SMEs which cannot afford on-site complex training.
The Maestro System aims to help European SMEs selling complex mechanical equipment to support and demonstrate their products and save travel expenses when the equipment is considered too complex for phone support.
This goal is achieved by the Maestro project by building a product-centered, shared, collaborative environment.
The Maestro system is a video based AR system with distributed video streaming.
The resulting technology will enable users to train themselves in maintenance tasks by connecting their PC workstations to the "Virtual Showroom", where they can inspect complex machinery as well as perform training and maintenance procedures
The MAESTRO system has been designed to provide a multi-layered service in order to fit the different transmission bandwidths available to the users. This important scalability feature allows access to a full service (e.g. high quality video) on a high bandwidth connection as well as to reduced functionality (e.g. a sequence of still images) on lower speed network connection.
Deployed Technologies :
Achieved results
The Maestro System aims to help European SMEs selling complex mechanical equipment to support and demonstrate their products and save travel expenses when the equipment is considered too complex for phone support.
This goal is achieved by the Maestro project by building a product-centered, shared, collaborative environment.
The Maestro system is a video based AR system with distributed video streaming.
It is divided into the following modules:
The collaborative maintenance session is the typical distributed AR scenario where two or more users are connected to the system simultaneously, using the AR environment, speech and gesture communication and Multimedia Database to resolve problems regarding the manufactured product.
The portability features of the system allow MAESTRO to run both on SGI Unix Workstations and on Windows NT PC. However, the inexpensive 3D and video hardware available today and the fast performance increase in the PC processor performance is leading to a preference for fast PCs with 3D-accelerator and digital video cards.
The AR subsystem of the Maestro project is based on a dedicated framework for distributed object-oriented virtual reality environments, implemented using C++ on top of the OpenGL interface and designed as an object-oriented API for creating distributed virtual reality environments. The video stream from the video camera is captured by the Maestro server and displayed in the environment using OpenGL. Each client must then decode the video stream before displaying the images. The AR subsystem is based on a monoscopic video see-through approach. The current set-up includes only one video camera and multiple users.
The user interface is an innovative one; in the Maestro project a specially designed 6DoF navigational device lets the user navigate through the 3D environment while an integrated micro joystick handles pointing tasks. A microphone gives the user hands-free access to the multimedia data base.
As exploitable result the MAESTRO systems is configurable as a new service relying on state-of-the-art techniques in the field of telepresence and augmented reality. Up to date MAESTRO is one of the few existing telepresence systems relying on scalable AR/VR capabilities.
Demonstrating MAESTRO at VRST’99
Maestro will be demonstrated at VRST’99 in the following ways:
We demonstrate Maestro Lite by showing, in a remote maintenance session, the technician and the user interacting.