Supporting Engagement and Floor Control in Hybrid Meetings

Remote participants in hybrid meetings often have problems to follow what is going on in the (physical) meeting room they are connected with. This paper describes a videoconferencing system for participation in hybrid meetings. The system has been developed as a research vehicle to see how technology based on automatic real-time recognition of conversational behavior in meetings can be used to improve engagement and floor control by remote participants. The system uses modules for online speech recognition, real-time visual focus of attention as well as a module that signals who is being addressed by the speaker. A built-in keyword spotter allows an automatic meeting assistant to call the remote participant’s attention when a topic of interest is raised, pointing at the transcription of the fragment to help him catch-up