AnyPlace: Automatic Gaze Alignment of the Teleported Avatar for MR Collaborative Environments

Abstract

Tele-conference systems are widely used as a form of communication media between remote sites. In order to overcome the limitations of video-based tele-conference systems with the continued technological innovations in mixed reality (MR), the use of a three-dimensional teleported avatar, in which a remote participant is teleported into a local environment, would be an effective future tele-conference system that would allow natural movement and interaction in the same location. However, technical difficulties must be resolved to enable control of the teleported avatar adapted to the environmental differences of the remote location and the user’s situation. This paper presents a novel method to adjust automatic gaze alignment of the teleported avatar with matching in the local site for MR collaborative environments. We ran comparative validation experiments to measure spatial accuracy of the gaze and evaluate the user’s communication efficiency using our method. In a quantitative experiment, the degree of gaze matching error in various environments was found to form a mirror-symmetrical U-shape, and the necessity of gaze matching gain was also recognized. Additionally, our experimental study showed that participants felt a greater co-presence during communication than in an idle situation without conversation.