Tele-Immersion: Virtual Reality Based Collaboration

The 'perception of being present in another space' during video teleconferencing is a challenging task. This work makes an effort to improve upon a user perception of being 'present' in another space by employing a virtual reality (VR) headset and an embodied telepresence system (ETS). In our application scenario, a remote participant uses a VR headset to collaborate with local collaborators. At a local site, an ETS is used as a physical representation of the remote participant among his/her local collaborators. The head movements of the remote person is mapped and presented by the ETS along with audio-video communication. Key considerations of complete design are discussed, where solutions to challenges related to head tracking, audio-video communication and data communication are presented. The proposed approach is validated by the user study where quantitative analysis is done on immersion and presence parameters.