82,054 research outputs found
Constructing a gazebo: supporting teamwork in a tightly coupled, distributed task in virtual reality
Many tasks require teamwork. Team members may work concurrently, but there must be some occasions of coming together. Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) allow distributed teams to come together across distance to share a task. Studies of CVE systems have tended to focus on the sense of presence or copresence with other people. They have avoided studying close interaction between us-ers, such as the shared manipulation of objects, because CVEs suffer from inherent network delays and often have cumbersome user interfaces. Little is known about the ef-fectiveness of collaboration in tasks requiring various forms of object sharing and, in particular, the concurrent manipu-lation of objects.
This paper investigates the effectiveness of supporting teamwork among a geographically distributed group in a task that requires the shared manipulation of objects. To complete the task, users must share objects through con-current manipulation of both the same and distinct at-tributes. The effectiveness of teamwork is measured in terms of time taken to achieve each step, as well as the impression of users. The effect of interface is examined by comparing various combinations of walk-in cubic immersive projection technology (IPT) displays and desktop devices
Telepresence and the Role of the Senses
The telepresence experience can be evoked in a number of ways. A well-known example is a player of videogames who reports about a telepresence experience, a subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when physically situated in another place. In this paper we set the phenomenon of telepresence into a theoretical framework. As people react subjectively to stimuli from telepresence, empirical studies can give more evidence about the phenomenon. Thus, our contribution is to bridge the theoretical with the empirical. We discuss theories of perception with an emphasis on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Gibson, the role of the senses and the Spinozian belief procedure. The aim is to contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon. A telepresence-study that included the affordance concept is used to empirically study how players report sense-reactions to virtual sightseeing in two cities. We investigate and explore the interplay of the philosophical and the empirical. The findings indicate that it is not only the visual sense that plays a role in this experience, but all senses
Meetings and Meeting Modeling in Smart Environments
In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear
Space time pixels
This paper reports the design of a networked system, the aim of
which is to provide an intermediate virtual space that will
establish a connection and support interaction between multiple
participants in two distant physical spaces.
The intention of the project is to explore the potential of the
digital space to generate original social relationships between
people that their current (spatial or social) position can
difficultly allow the establishment of innovative connections.
Furthermore, to explore if digital space can sustain, in time,
low-level connections like these, by balancing between the two
contradicting needs of communication and anonymity.
The generated intermediate digital space is a dynamic reactive
environment where time and space information of two physical
places is superimposed to create a complex common ground where
interaction can take place. It is a system that provides
awareness of activity in a distant space through an abstract
mutable virtual environment, which can be perceived in several
different ways – varying from a simple dynamic background image
to a common public space in the junction of two private spaces or
to a fully opened window to the other space – according to the
participants will.
The thesis is that the creation of an intermediary environment
that operates as an activity abstraction filter between several
users, and selectively communicates information, could give
significance to the ambient data that people unconsciously
transmit to others when co-existing. It can therefore generate a new layer of connections and original interactivity patterns; in contrary to a straight-forward direct real video and sound
system, that although it is functionally more feasible, it
preserves the existing social constraints that limit interaction
into predefined patterns
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