Avatar and Gaze Cues for Mixed Reality Mixed Presence Groupware

Mitchell Norman, Gun A. Lee, Ross T. Smith, Mark Billinghurst

Abstract: Real-world collaborations are often complex and require many users to work together to achieve a common goal. However, current research in collaborative Mixed Reality (MR) is mostly limited to one-to-one collaborative systems and thus does not fully capture the complexity of these real-world collaborations. This paper describes a Mixed Presence collaborative MR system where two people in the same location use Augmented Reality displays to collaborate with a third remote user represented as a virtual avatar or eye-gaze cue. Preliminary findings from a user study showed the gaze cues significantly improved social presence perceived by the participants, while the effectiveness of the avatar may need further investigation.