Think Fast: Rapid Localization of Teleoperator Gaze in 360° Hosted Telepresence

Abstract

We evaluate the ability of locally present participants to localize an avatar head’s gaze direction rapidly in hosted telepresence. We performed a controlled user study to test two potential solutions to indicate a remote user’s gaze. We analyze the influence of the user’s distance to the avatar and display technique on localization accuracy. Furthermore, we examine the effect of the avatar head’s rotation around the pitch and yaw axes on the localization accuracy. Our experimental results suggest that all these factors have a significant effect on the localization accuracy with different extent. The results also verified that people had a better perceptive and localizing ability when interacting with a 3D AR-displayed avatar. In addition, participants preferred to interact with a 3D avatar displayed using a simulated AR technique instead of with a 2D avatar displayed in a tablet because of its high realism. Our findings motivate the need for 3D avatar display in the further design of telepresence systems.