A Multimodal Perceptual User Interface for Collaborative Environments

In this paper a 3D graphics-based remote collaborative environment is introduced. This system is able to provide multiclient and multimedia communication, and exploits a novel multimodal user interaction paradigm based on hand gesture and perceptual user interfaces. The use of machine vision technologies and a user-centered approach produce a highly usable and natural human-computer interface, allowing even untrained users a realistic and relaxing experience for long and demanding tasks. We then note and motivate that such an application can be considered as an Augmented Reality application; according to this view, we describe our platform in terms of long-term usability and comfort of use. The proposed system is expected to be useful in remote interaction with dynamic environments. To illustrate our work, we introduce a proof-of-concept multimodal, bare-hand application and discuss its implementation and the obtained experimental results.