Reproducing A Laser Pointer Dot On A Secondary Projected Screen

Large lecture rooms typically contain more than one projector/screen pair, but the presenter can point a hand-held laser pointer at only one screen at a time. If the audience at the other side of the room has difficulty seeing the laser pointer dot, the presentation performance may be compromised. This paper introduces a robotic laser pointer system to solve such a problem. After calibration, a camera monitoring the primary screen continuously feeds images to a computer that detects and localizes the laser dot by comparing successive frames. The computer uses inverse kinematics to calculate the joint angles needed for a pan/tilt base holding another laser pointer to reproduce the laser position on the other screen. Quantitative evaluation verifies the system's capabilities and reveals potential improvements and further experiments needed to deploy the system in real lecture settings.