Augmented Reality Videoconferencing for Collaborative Work

This paper describes an Augmented Reality videoconference system, which is a novel remote collaboration tool combining a desktop-based AR system and a videoconference module. The novelty of our system is the combination of these tools with AR applications superimposed on live video background displaying the conference parties’ real environment, merging the advantages of the natural face-to-face communication of videoconferencing and AR’s interaction capabilities with distributed virtual objects using tangible physical artifacts. The simplicity of the system makes it affordable for everyday use. We explain our system design based on concurrent video streaming, optical tracking and 3D application sharing, and provide experimental proof that it yields superior quality compared to pure video streaming with successive optical tracking from the compressed streams. Collaborative AR applications built on our framework are presented, which are followed by the outcomes of an initial user study taking ergonomic and usability aspects into account. for collaborative work. Perceiving and interacting with a desktop at a distant location provides easy access to remote applications for assistance and joint work. Early work using application sharing in 3D environments is described by Dykstra [4], where texture mapping techniques are used to run X applications on surfaces of objects in 3D virtual spaces. An AR extension of this work by Regenbrecht et al. [11] places interactive 2D desktop screens in an augmented 3D environment physically situated on a real office desk. Users wear video see-through HMDs and interact with standard 2D application windows that are attached to physical clipboards and can be placed at any position around the user. Soares et al. applied virtual humans to enhance interaction in a world combining a 3D VRML space and an application sharing client or a shared whiteboard. This approach increases the sense of collaboration among participants as they can see each other’s actions by looking at the virtual counterparts. This humanoid avatar interface allows for non-verbal communication as well. Ishii et al. [5] designed seamless, real-time shared workspaces for collaborative work. Their groupware system called TeamWorkStation combines two or more translucent live video images of computer screens or physical desktops using a video synthesis technique. They used two cameras for each collaborator: one for capturing the face, and the other for capturing the desktop image and the hand gestures. On these shared physical whiteboards users can draw images together and explain concepts to each other with hand gestures using real tools like a pen, brush etc. Users wear a head set for voice chat, which allows for a more personal and smoother communication between the collaborators.