Abstract-The recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) research have resulted in a resurgence of successful commercial products including popular and user friendly systems like the ASUS ZenFone AR or the HTC Vive. These systems enabled investigations into support for collaborations that span geographic distances involving various degrees of immersion. For example, a real-time cooperation between researchers from Malaysia and the US working in a shared space where the collaborators from Taiwan operate the ZenFone AR and Microsoft HoloLens in the actual physical environment while the researchers from the US are outfitted with VR systems working in a scanned virtual space. Results from these types of cross distant and cross reality collaborations are interesting and often seem futuristic. Consequently, it can be challenging to understand the underlying impacts and gain insights from such work.
This talk begins by providing a motivation and describing an attempt to identify the fundamental elements of digital interactions and remote collaborations; and proposes the Cross Reality Collaboration Framework (CRCF) to provide a common platform for discussing, comparing, and contrasting remote collaborations across different realities with different AR/VR configurations. Although in an early stage of development, the current iteration of CRCF is capable of analyzing technological configurations that are drastically different. For example, comparing and contrasting a ZenFone AR application with the Pokemon Go game to reveal insights. The potential strengths of CRCF will be illustrated by applying it to analyze popular technological configurations and identifying opportunities for further investigations. The talk then describes a prototype solution addressing an identified opportunity and presents results from a testing environment that supports the collaboration of four participants who are located in different geographical places and are participating via the Microsoft HoloLens, Microsoft Kinect, HTC Vive, and a regular PC. The talk also presents CRCF inspired initial results in exploring interaction and input support for recent head mounted and mobile markerless AR, like the ASUS ZenFone AR, technologies. Lastly, our current work, and future directions will be discussed.
Talk Locations
Faculty of Computing and Informatics, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia, December 2017. (Host: Dr. Wong Ya Ping)
ASUS Technology, Suzhou (苏州), China, November 2017. (Host: Professor 陈朝成 and Generation Manager of ASUS Technology Suzhou 高致遠).