Tracky Notes: Trackable Sticky Notes for Indexing a Video of Meetings

Video records are sometimes used during meetings nowadays in order to compensate for the incompleteness of hand-written minutes. To use video effectively to record the minutes of a meeting, indices are considered necessary in addition to standard functions of movie players. Some systems can form indices by sensing human actions in the world, but such indices are not directly relevant to the contents of the discussions that occur in meetings. In this study, we propose an automated meeting index system based on people's discussions during daily meetings in the world. In our system, indices based on the contents of discussion can be automatically formulated in meetings if only paper, writing implements, and a camera are arranged in a certain manner. To this end, we develop trackable sticky notes, called "Tracky Notes," as indices. Tracky Notes can be tracked with visible markers through a camera, and is robust against occlusion. We then propose a meeting viewer where Tracky Notes are used as indices. Finally, we report the result of a user study conducted in a university classroom. The study revealed the appropriate region of visible markers and the robustness against occlusion of Tracky Notes. We also measured the effectiveness of our system comparing with standard functions of movie players.