Immersive teleconference system based on human-robot-avatar interaction using head-tracking devices

This paper introduces a cost-efficient immersive teleconference system. Especially to enhance immersive interaction capability during one-to-many telecommunication, this paper concentrates on the design of a teleconference system that is composed of a set of robotic devices and web-based control/monitoring interfaces for human-robot-avatar interaction. To this end, we first propose a serverclient network model for human-machine interaction systems based on the latest HTML5 technology. As a hardware system for teleconferencing, the simplest robot is designed specially for remote users to be able to experience augmented reality naturally on live scenes. Modularized software systems are then explained in view of accessibility and functionality. This paper also describes how a human head motion is captured, synchronized with a robot in the real world, and rendered through an 3-D avatar in the augmented world for human-robot-avatar interaction. Finally, the proposed system is evaluated through a questionnaire survey that follows a series of user-experience tests.