Foveal Displays: on Integrating Multi-resolution Input and Output Devices

Previous research on human visual perception system had conducted studies on the spatial variation in human visual resolution. Their studies had shown that only the fovea region of human eyes can afford sharp vision with acute visual details. In this paper, we propose an interactive multi-resolution monitor system composed of a multi-resolution input channel and output display. The multi-resolution input channel consists of a wide angle camera and a Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) camera. The multi-resolution output display consists of a fixed projector and a steerable projector. The fixed projector takes inputs from the wide-angle camera to provide an overview of a scene, while the steerable projector takes inputs from the PTZ camera to provide a highresolution sub-view of the same scene. Our system combines multi-resolution input devices and output devices to create a cost-effective, attentive user interface that can help reduce human operator’s cognitive loads during their monitoring tasks. The contributions are two folds: (1) enabling interactive capture and display of high-resolution region-of-interest for center of attention while providing a low-resolution background for peripheral awareness, and (2) balance the requirement between capture and display resolution and system cost.