Reflection of Presence: Toward more natural and responsive
telecollaboration
Stefan Agamanolis, Alex Westner, and V. Michael Bove, Jr.
MIT Media Laboratory
Proc. SPIE Multimedia Networks, 3228A,, 1997.
The purpose of Reflection of Presence is to create a framework
for a telepresence environment that intelligently responds and adapts
itself to its inhabitants in order to enhance interpersonal
communication or collaboration. The metaphor is that of a ``magic
mirror'' in which one not only sees a reflection of oneself, but also
reflections of the other remotely-located participants, just as if
everyone is standing in the same room looking at each other through a
real mirror. Using visual and auditory cues, segmented images of
participants are dynamically layered into a single display using
varying transparency, position and scale to reflect center of
attention and degree of presence. Wireless tangible interfaces allow
participants to customize their shared space and collaboratively
manipulate and annotate media objects in the background. The system
is novel in that it is implemented totally as a set of cooperating
scripts instead of through a low-level programming language, enabling
rapid experimental changes in the behavior of the prototype.
Keywords: telecollaboration, telepresence, multimedia,
videoconferencing