Self-Calibrating Camera-Assisted Presentation Interface

This paper presents a self-calibrating camera-assisted presentation interface that enables the user to control presentations using a laser pointer. The setup system consists of a computer connected to an LCD projector and a consumer-level digital camera aimed at the presentation screen. Although the locations, orientations and optical parameters of the camera and projector are unknown, the projector-camera calibrates itself by inferring the mapping between pixels in the camera image to pixels in the presentation slide. The camera is subsequently used to detect the position of the pointing device (such as a laser pointer dot) on the screen, allowing the laser pointer to emulate the pointing actions of a mouse. The user may then select active regions in the presentation, or even draw on the projected image. Additionally, arbitrary distortions due to projector placement are negated, allowing the projector (and camera) to be placed anywhere in the presentation room — for instance, at the side rather than the center of the room. This solution works with standard hardware, but could easily be incorporated into the next generation of LCD projector systems.