Acting rehearsal in collaborative multimodal mixed reality environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful

An eye tracking interface for image search

This paper explores the feasibility of using an eye tracker as an image retrieval interface. A database of image similarity values between 1000 Corel images is used in the study. Results from participants performing image search tasks show that eye tracking data can be used to reach target images quicker than by random selection. The effects of the intrinsic difficulty of finding images and the time allowed for successive selections were also investigated

VizSpace: Interaction in the Positive Parallax Screen Plane

The VizSpace is a physically situated interactive system that combines touch and hand interactions behind the screen to create the effect that users are reaching inside and interacting in a 3D virtual workspace. It extends the conventional touch table interface with hand tracking and 3D visualization to enable interaction in the positive parallax plane, where the binocular focus falls behind the screen so as not to occlude projected images. This paper covers the system design, human factors and ergonomics considerations for an interactive and immersive gesture-based visualization system. Results are presented from a preliminary user study that validates the usability of VizSpace

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A fully immersive set-up for remote interaction and neurorehabilitation based on virtual body ownership

Although telerehabilitation Systems represent one of the most technologically appealing clinical solutions fort the immediate future, they still present limitations that prevent their standardization. Here we propose an integrated approach that includes three key and novel factors: (a) fully immersive virtual environments, including virtual body representation and ownership; (b) multimodal interaction with remote people and virtual objects including haptic interaction; and (c) a physical representation of the patient at the hospital through embodiment agents (e.g., as a physical robot). The importance of secure and rapid communication betweent the nodes is also stressed and an exemple implemented solutionis described. Finally, we discuss the proposed approach with reference to the existint literatura and systems

Acting rehearsal in collaborative multimodal mixed reality environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful

A fully immersive set-up for remote interaction and neurorehabilitation based on virtual body ownership

Although telerehabilitation Systems represent one of the most technologically appealing clinical solutions fort the immediate future, they still present limitations that prevent their standardization. Here we propose an integrated approach that includes three key and novel factors: (a) fully immersive virtual environments, including virtual body representation and ownership; (b) multimodal interaction with remote people and virtual objects including haptic interaction; and (c) a physical representation of the patient at the hospital through embodiment agents (e.g., as a physical robot). The importance of secure and rapid communication betweent the nodes is also stressed and an exemple implemented solutionis described. Finally, we discuss the proposed approach with reference to the existint literatura and systems