Stefan Agamanolis, Alex Westner, V. Michael Bove, Jr.

Abstract

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 also reflections of the other remotely-located participants, just as if every one 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.