Mixed reality participants in smart meeting rooms and smart home enviroments

Human–computer interaction requires modeling of the user. A user profile typically contains preferences, interests, characteristics, and interaction behavior. However, in its multimodal interaction with a smart environment the user displays characteristics that show how the user, not necessarily consciously, verbally and nonverbally provides the smart environment with useful input and feedback. Especially in ambient intelligence environments we encounter situations where the environment supports interaction between the environment, smart objects (e.g., mobile robots, smart furniture) and human participants in the environment. Therefore it is useful for the profile to contain a physical representation of the user obtained by multi-modal capturing techniques. We discuss the modeling and simulation of interacting participants in a virtual meeting room, we discuss how remote meeting participants can take part in meeting activities and they have some observations on translating research results to smart home environments

Virtual Meeting Rooms: From Observation to Simulation

Virtual meeting rooms are used for simulation of real meeting behavior and can show how people behave, how they gesture, move their heads, bodies, their gaze behavior during conversations. They are used for visualising models of meeting behavior, and they can be used for the evaluation of these models. They are also used to show the effects of controlling certain parameters on the behavior and in experiments to see what the effect is on communication when various channels of information - speech, gaze, gesture, posture - are switched off or manipulated in other ways. The paper presents the various stages in the development of a virtual meeting room as well and illustrates its uses by presenting some results of experiments to see whether human judges can induce conversational roles in a virtual meeting situation when they only see the head movements of participants in the meeting

Overcoming distance in virtual teams : effects of communication media, experience, and time pressure on distributed teamwork

Een virtueel team is een team waarvan de leden elkaar niet of zelden in levenden lijve ontmoeten, bijvoorbeeld omdat de teamleden verschillende werktijden hebben of op verschillende vestigingen van een organisatie werken. Anders dan reguliere teams zijn virtuele teams in grote mate afhankelijk van informatie- en communicatietechnologie. Een voorbeeld van een virtueel team is een ontwerpteam dat binnen een multinationaal bedrijf een nieuwe productlijn ontwikkelt vanaf verschillende locaties door gebruik te maken van e-mail en videovergaderingen. Een belangrijke bijdrage van het huidige onderzoek is dat het laat zien dat de beperkingen van gedistribueerd samenwerken die de wijdverbreide toepassing van virtuele teams hinderen, zijn te overkomen. Door een combinatie van relevante groupware en ervaring met samenwerken op afstand, kunnen virtuele teams werk produceren dat qua kwaliteit en hoeveelheid vergelijkbaar is met het werk van face-to-face teams. Het lijkt er dan ook op dat virtuele teams geen modeverschijnsel zijn. Virtuele teams zijn de toekomst

Effective teleconferencing: An international investigation of the factors influencing the effectiveness of distributed meetings

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Science Target via https://www.sciencetarget.com/Journal/index.php/IJBRD/article/view/565With businesses becoming global in their reach, the use of distributed meetings and associated conferencing technologies is at the core of their successful and efficient operation. However, the actual effectiveness of these meetings is thought to vary enormously. This paper reports on a multi-country investigation into the factors that make for an effective distributed meeting in everyday practice. The results are based on a survey conducted with 400 professionals supported by 40 interviews with experienced teleconferencing users. Ten interviews and 100 survey responses were obtained from each of the following four countries: Australia, China, the UK, and the US. The results indicate that a wide range of factors need to be optimised to ensure the most effective distributed meetings. The most influential factors were good sound quality and reliable conferencing technology, but other important aspects included having a good chairperson and attentive participants. The survey also identified some differences between countries, particularly between China and the other countries surveyed on issues such as speaker identification and the barriers to adopting new conferencing technology.We would like to thank BT/Dolby for sponsoring the project and providing help and support through the research. Thanks are also due to Natasha Dwyer and her team who conducted the Australian interviews and survey and helped with their analysis. We are also grateful to ACE FieldWorkChina for their assistance with recruitment for our studies in China. We would also like to thank the following for their very valuable insights into distributed meetings: Steve Brewster, Paul Dourish, David Good, Brian Moore, and JoAnne Yates

RFCs, MOOs, LMSs: Assorted Educational Devices\ud

This paper discusses implicit social consequences of four basic internet protocols. The results are then related to the field of computer-assisted teaching. An educational on-line community is described and compared to the emerging standard of web-based learning management.\u

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and International Business Travel: Mobility Allies?

Like forecasts about the paperless office, technological solutions to the problem of international business travel continue to be deferred. As with the increased use of office paper, international business travel is defying predictions of its decline. There is growing evidence to suggest that business sectors which seem ideally placed to substitute information and communication technology (ICT) for travel, are actually generating more physical travel than other sectors. This paper develops a case study of the Irish software industry to exemplify why international travel is not diminishing in importance how and the ICT and business travel relationship is changing in this sector. The paper presents research findings that suggest that a cycle of substitution, generation and modification relationships have occurred as mobility interdependencies have developed.Peer Reviewe