Physical Space Oriented Tele-Communication

Digital but physical surrogates are tangible representations of remote people positioned within an office and under digital control. By having them react to physical actions of people, surrogates can control the communication capabilities of a media space. This enables the smooth transition from awareness to casual interaction while mitigating concerns about privacy.

iRIS is a telepresence robot that facilitates mutual reference to a physical object over the distance. The robot has a display that shows remote participant’s head. The display is mounted on a 3-DOF neck. The robot also has a built-in projector enabling a remote participant to show his/her actual hand gestures through a physical object in the local environment.

A long-standing challenge in video-mediated communication systems is to represent a remote participant’s gaze direction in local environments correctly. To address this issue, we developed ThirdEye, an add-on eye-display for a video communication system. This display is made from an artificial ulexite (TV rock) that is cut into a hemispherical shape, enabling light from the bottom surface to be projected onto the hemisphere surface.