Indra leads an R&D+I project to design future television

Indra, the premier IT company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe, leads “ImmersiveTV”. It is an R&D+i project which seeks to research on digital immersive content creation technologies and on the whole value chain (production, transmission, reception and visualization) in order to optimise the feeling of integration by the user with TV beyond what current 3D techniques offer.

The budget amounts to 2.7 million Euros and is co-financed by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce within the framework of the Plan Avanza Competitividad. Besides Indra, the Technical University of Madrid (Cedint and G@TV), the Polytechnic University of Valencia (iTEAM) and specialised media and telecommunication firms such as Agile Contens, Eumovil (Grupo Media Pro) and Ericsson and from the domotics sector, INMOMATICA will also participate.

The objective of immersive TV is to let the spectator experiment real sensations first hand by feeling part of it and play the main role so that he/she can interact with the scenario in any spatial dimension. The project will combine production and 3D visualisation techniques adding depth to the images along with surround sound. In addition to this, several sensors will capture the user’s movements and will translate them into a virtual scenario projected on five spatial directions.

This way, the system should respond to the users’ actions with visual, audition and touch stimuli so that the interaction can be as natural as possible and non-invasive. Besides this, all existing transmission standards will be investigated: DVB in all its variants; HBBTV, which combines broadcast services with broadband as well as the adequate compression format for the contents.

The outcome of the project should be an immersive prototype oriented to the consumption market for the user to feel part of the scenario at home.
For the validation of the prototype screens, 3D receivers and the virtual five-sided cave the Technical University of Madrid has installed in its Montegacendo campus will be used. The cave consists of a room made up of five projections which recreate a virtual world based on computer processed images for the user to interact with. That is the reason why one of the goals of the project is to contribute new techniques for the projection of 3D images in real time such as TV signal, so that later this experience can be employed for consumption purposes through portable devices or projectors capable of showing these five sides.

Immersive TV is a sort of a propeller project of industrial research which aims to create in Spain a new market of content production and consumption based on immersion whose exploitation is not part of traditional consumption yet.

Besides in leisure and entertainment, the outcome of the project could be employed in other sectors, for instance, if applied to cognitive immersion it could assist people with special needs; a guidance system for surgery or telesurgery, marketing and electronic commerce initiatives including tours or virtual product testing, augmented reality systems for events for a better understanding by the spectator or immersive video conference systems for remote teams.

A decade of experience in the development of TV interactive services

The IT company has more than a decade of experience in consultancy projects and development of interactive services as well as in the launch and exploitation of digital terrestrial television networks.

An evidence of this is its participation in the integration of interactive services and in the development and implementation of the T-Commerce platform of former Quiero TV operator, as well as in different pilots based on MHP platform. In this sector, we should mention “Micomercats” for Televisió de Catalunya (TVC), which was the first pilot in Spain of DTT with MHP involving real users and the implementation and the start up of the platform for the government of the Canary Islands.

It was also involved in PROFIT projects of great importance within the DTT sector, for example: “Emplea-t”, the first public service interactive application associated to a TV programme and interactive foreigner-oriented portal to learn the Spanish language; implementations of the electronic ID card and smart cards for TV decoders among which we can highlight the development and implementation of the first T-Administration national platform with access through ID card.

Indra has also used its DTT experience in Latin America, where it has led and coordinated the implementation of different pilots to promote DVB European standard in a critical moments as most of the countries had not decided which standard to use (European, Japanese or North American) due to the imminent deployment of the DTT. It started up the temporary transmissions in cities such as: (Montevideo (Uruguay), Santiago and Concepción (Chile), Lima (Peru), Cartagena de Indias and Bogotá (Colombia); Caracas (Venezuela) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to investment in R&D with nearly € 500 M during the last three years. In 2010 revenues reached € 2,557 M of which a 40% came from the international market. The company employs more than 30,000 professionals and has clients in more than 100 countries.