Telethrone Reconstructed; Ongoing Testing Toward a More Natural Situated Display

Abstract

The concept of supporting ad hoc or dynamic membership tele-present meetings through pulling up a chair is novel. In real world business situations, people pull up a chair after catching the eye of someone already seated. Telethrone is a situated display on a chair which allows multiple correct views of a remote collaborator. The system has been expanded to support informal meetings where chairs can be moved around. This is facilitated through the novel integration of a 3D reconstructed model of a person, with live viewpoint dependent rendering onto a retro-reflective surface. This removes the need for painstaking alignment of multiple cameras and projectors each time a chair is moved. A between subjects experiment tested accuracy of reconnected mutual gaze mediated by part of the system. Subjectively easier and harder situations are compared. Specifically best and worst cases, both in terms of orientation of eyes in the reconstructed head, and angle of observer gaze onto the display. Discussion compares results to experiments that used other systems to attempt to convey eye gaze by different techniques. This research builds toward a scalable system for ad hoc business meetings; a paradigm poorly supported by current video conferencing. It is also applicable to supporting conversations between seated people in any scenario where seats might be moved, for example in interaction between client and therapist in tele-therapy.