Real-Time Whiteboard Capture and Processing Using a Video Camera for Remote Collaboration

This paper describes our recently developed system which captures pen strokes on physical whiteboards in real time using an off-the-shelf video camera. Unlike many existing tools, our system does not instrument the pens or the whiteboard. It analyzes the sequence of captured video images in real time, classifies the pixels into whiteboard background, pen strokes and foreground objects (e.g., people in front of the whiteboard), extracts newly written pen strokes, and corrects the color to make the whiteboard completely white. This allows us to transmit whiteboard contents using very low bandwidth to remote meeting participants. Combined with other teleconferencing tools such as voice conference and application sharing, our system becomes a powerful tool to share ideas during online meetings