Augmented reality as means for creating shared understanding

2011

HP Laboratories HPL-2010-201 augmented reality, remote collaboration, computer vision, natural interaction, immersive experiences Video conferencing systems are designed to deliver a collaboration experience that is as close as possible to actually meeting in person. Current systems, however, do a poor job of integrating video streams presenting the users with shared collaboration content. Real and virtual content are unnaturally separated, leading to problems with nonverbal communication and the overall conference experience. Methods of interacting with shared content are typically limited to pointing with a mouse, which is not a natural component of face-to-face human conversation. This paper presents a natural and intuitive method for sharing digital content within a meeting using augmented reality and computer vision. Real and virtual content is seamlessly integrated into the collaboration space. We develop new vision based methods for interacting with inserted digital content including target finding and gesture based control. These improvements let us deliver an immersive collaboration experience using natural gesture and object based interaction.

2001

ABSTRACT In this paper we introduce an Augmented Reality video conferencing system and show some results of the evaluation. The AR user can see remote users on paper cards in real world. The user can freely put virtual monitors. Then they can use spatial cues to get the communication smoothly. Also we appended a new function that eliminates background scene of desktop users. Evaluation results showed that video images play a important role for both AR and desktop users even if HMD occludes AR user's eyes.

2004

This paper describes an Augmented Reality Videoconferencing System, which is a novel remote collaboration tool combining a desktop-based AR system and a videoconference module. The novelty of our system is the combination of these tools with AR applications superimposed on live video background displaying the conference parties' real environment, merging the advantages of the natural face-to-face communication of videoconferencing and AR's interaction capabilities with distributed virtual objects using tangible physical artifacts. The simplicity of the system makes it affordable for everyday use. We explain our system design based on concurrent video streaming, optical tracking and 3D application sharing, and provide experimental proof that it yields superior quality compared to pure video streaming with successive optical tracking from the compressed streams. We demonstrate the system's collaborative features with a volume rendering application that allows users to display and examine volumetric data simultaneously and to highlight or explore slices of the volume by manipulating an optical marker as a cutting plane interaction device.

Abstract Presented at ELFI 2019, European Light Field Imaging Workshop , Borovets, Bulgaria, 2019

Communication is the most useful tool to impart knowledge, understand ideas, clarify thoughts and expressions, organize plan and manage every single day-to-day activity. Although there are different modes of communication, physical barrier always affects the clarity of the message due to the absence of body language and facial expressions. These barriers are overcome by video calling, which is technically the most advance mode of communication at present. The proposed work concentrates around the concept of video calling in a more natural and seamless way using Augmented Reality (AR). AR can be helpful in giving the users an experience of physical presence in each other’s environment. Our work provides an entirely new platform for video calling, wherein the users can enjoy the privilege of their own virtual space to interact with the individual’s environment. Moreover, there is no limitation of sharing the same screen space. Any number of participants can be accommodated over a single conference without having to compromise the screen size.

2007 IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces, 2007

We have implemented an augmented reality videoconferencing system that inserts virtual graphics overlays into the live video stream of remote conference participants. The virtual objects are manipulated using a novel interaction technique cascading bimanual tangible interaction and eye tracking. User studies prove that our user interface enriches remote collaboration by offering hitherto unexplored ways for collaborative object manipulation such as gaze controlled raypicking of remote physical and virtual objects.

International Journal of …, 2003

We present an analysis of communication behavior in face-to-face collaboration using a multi-user Augmented Reality (AR) interface. We conducted two experiments. In the first, collaboration with AR technology was compared to more traditional unmediated and screen-based collaboration. In the second we compare collaboration with three different AR displays. Several measures are used to analyze communication behavior, and we found that users exhibited many of the same behaviors in a collaborative AR interface as in face-to-face unmediated collaboration. User communication behavior also changed with the type of AR display used. We describe implications of these results for the design of collaborative AR interfaces and directions for future research.

International Journal of Innovative Computing, 2019

Application that adopts collaborative system allows multiple users to interact with other users in the same virtual space either in Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR). This paper aims to integrate the VR and AR space in a Collaborative User Interface that enables the user to cooperate with other users in a different type of interfaces in a single shared space manner. The gesture interaction technique is proposed as the interaction tool in both of the virtual spaces as it can provide a more natural gesture interaction when interacting with the virtual object. The integration of VR and AR space provide a cross-discipline shared data interchange through the network protocol of client-server architecture.

Communications of the ACM, 2002

2019

Meetings occupy 40% of the average working day. According to the Wall Street Journal, CEOs spend 18 hours, Civil Servants spend 22 Hours, and the average office worker spends 16 hours per week in meetings. Meetings are where information is shared, discussions take place and the most important decisions are made. The outcome of meetings should be clearly understood actions, but this is rarely the case as comprehensive meeting minutes and action points are not often captured. Meetings become ineffective and time is wasted and travelling becomes the biggest obstacle and cost (both monetarily and environmentally). Video conferencing technology has been developed to provide a low-cost alternative to expensive, time-consuming meetings. However, the video conferencing user experience lacks naturalness, and this inhibits effective communication between the participants. The Augmented Reality (AR) shared experience application proposed in this work will be the next form of video conferencing.

2002

We conducted two experiments comparing communication behaviors of co-located users in collaborative augmented reality (AR) interfaces. In the first experiment, we compared optical, stereo-and mono-video, and immersive head mounted displays (HMDs) using a target identification task. It was found that differences in the real world visibility severely affect communication behaviors. The optical see-through case produced the best results with the least extra communication needed. Generally, the more difficult it was to use non-verbal communication cues, the more people resorted to speech cues to compensate. In the second experiment, we compared three different combinations of task and communication spaces using a 2D icon designing task with optical see-through HMDs. It was found that the spatial relationship between the task and communication spaces also severely affected communication behaviors. Placing the task space between the subjects produced the most active behaviors in terms of initiatory body languages and utterances with least miscommunications.