[secdir] [New-work] New ITU-T Study Group 16 Question: "Telepresence systems"

At its 19-30 July 2010 meeting, ITU-T Study Group 16 agreed to the
creation of a new Question entitled "Telepresence systems":

New ITU-T Study Group 16 Question 5/16:  Telepresence systems
1. Motivation
Telepresence represents an important evolution of the videoconferencing
market. This trend is expected to accelerate, as mainstream video
applications begin to offer telepresence features.  Many products exist
today that, although they are based on IETF SIP and ITU-T H.323
protocols, lack interoperability due to proprietary extensions needed to
these base protocols to offer a user-rich experience.
The increased penetration of broadband communications and higher user
awareness of video applications, coupled with financial and
environmental gains brought by remote collaboration tools have brought a
boost to applications such as telepresence.  This makes it important
that standardized solutions be developed to ensure multi-vendor
interoperability on a global basis.
2. Question
Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:
*	Definition and scope of telepresence systems
*	Functions and service requirements for interoperable
telepresence systems
*	Standardizing the means for full interworking between
telepresence systems, including means facilitating the coherent
presentation of multiple audio and video streams - allowing remote
participants to be rendered at their true size for their apparent
distance, maintaining correct eye contact, gesticular cues, and
simultaneously providing spatial audio that is consistent with the video
presentation, as well as taking into account the meeting environment to
provide a more immersive experience.
*	Standardizing the means for interworking between current
telepresence systems and other systems, including the legacy telephone
network and advanced multimedia systems, through additions to ITU-T
H.246 and other Recommendations as necessary.
*	Considerations on how to further enhance telepresence systems to
mitigate negative impact on climate change and to encourage a positive
impact reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
3. Tasks
Tasks include but are not limited to:
*	Define services and functions to support interoperability of
current generation telepresence systems using existing protocols such as
ITU-T H.323 and SIP.
*	Identify modification and/or extensions needed in existing
protocols to support telepresence, in coordination with other
standardization bodies, forums and consortia, as needed.
*	Modify and/or extend existing protocols under the ITU-T SG 16
responsibility to enable interoperable telepresence systems (in
particular, Recommendations of the ITU-T H.300 series).
*	Identify methods for exchange of meeting environment information
in order to allow adaptation between unlike telepresence system
environments.
*	Provide guidelines to achieve the required user experience for
telepresence systems (such as methods to achieve eye contact, same
lighting environments in separate rooms, audio levels, and echo
cancellation).
*	Identify requirements for media codecs, taking into account
needs for scalability, multiple views, multiple audio channels, and
mixing of media streams including efficient compressed digital to
compressed digital processing.
*	Enable interoperable telecoms/ICT accessibility features in
telepresence systems.
*	Identify requirements towards second-generation telepresence
systems.
*	Consider the role of control systems in telepresence systems.
4. Relationships
Recommendations:
H. series and relevant F/G/T-series
Questions:
Q1/16 (Multimedia systems and terminals), Q2/16 (H.323 systems), Q3/16
(Multimedia Gateways), Q4/16 (QoS), Q6/16 (Visual Coding), Q7/16
(Systems and coordination aspects of media coding), Q10/16 (Speech and
audio coding and related software tools), Q12/16 (AMS), Q13/16 (IPTV),
Q16/16 (Speech enhancement functions in signal processing network
equipment), Q18/16 (Interaction aspects of signal processing network
equipment), Q22/16 (Multimedia applications and services), Q26/16
(Accessibility to Multimedia Systems and Services)
Study Groups:
*	ITU-T Study Groups: 5 (Environment and Climate Change), 9
(cable, video quality), 11 (signalling), 12 (QoS, QoE, Quality
assessment methodologies), 13 (NGN, future networks), 17 (Security,
languages)
*	ITU-R Study Group 6 (Broadcasting)
*	ITU-D Study Group 2
Standardization bodies, forums and consortia:
*	ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 "Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and
hypermedia information"
*	International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC) for
interoperability aspects and enhancements to existing Recommendations
*	IETF Real-time Applications and Infrastructure (RAI) for
IETF-defined protocols
*	Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) for
interoperability aspects between enterprises, service providers, and
consumer clouds.