Estimating the Gaze of a Virtuality Human

Abstract

The aim of our experiment is to determine if eye-gaze can be estimated from a virtuality human: to within the accuracies that underpin social interaction; and reliably across gaze poses and camera arrangements likely in every day settings. The scene is set by explaining why Immersive Virtuality Telepresence has the potential to meet the grand challenge of faithfully communicating both the appearance and the focus of attention of a remote human participant within a shared 3D computer-supported context. Within the experiment n=22 participants rotated static 3D virtuality humans, reconstructed from surround images, until they felt most looked at. The dependent variable was absolute angular error, which was compared to that underpinning social gaze behaviour in the natural world. Independent variables were 1) relative orientations of eye, head and body of captured subject; and 2) subset of cameras used to texture the form. Analysis looked for statistical and practical significance and qualitative corroborating evidence. The analysed results tell us much about the importance and detail of the relationship between gaze pose, method of video based reconstruction, and camera arrangement. They tell us that virtuality can reproduce gaze to an accuracy useful in social interaction, but with the adopted method of Video Based Reconstruction, this is highly dependent on combination of gaze pose and camera arrangement. This suggests changes in the VBR approach in order to allow more flexible camera arrangements. The work is of interest to those wanting to support expressive meetings that are both socially and spatially situated, and particular those using or building Immersive Virtuality Telepresence to accomplish this. It is also of relevance to the use of virtuality humans in applications ranging from the study of human interactions to gaming and the crossing of the stage line in films and TV.

Telethrone Reconstructed; Ongoing Testing Toward a More Natural Situated Display

“…Walking participants are head tracked as they try to align to the eye gaze of a static reconstructed model that continuously adjusts for their head position. This is similar to methods employed in "Estimating the gaze of a virtuality human" (Roberts at al, 2013) and Telehuman (Kim et al, 2012).…”

“…Figure 5 shows box plots comparing the two conditions. All statistics were performed in SPSS comparing within the experiment and against the most similar experiments, Telehuman (Kim et al, 2012) and "Evaluating the gaze of a virtuality human" (Roberts et al, 2013). Differences in the final positions shown in Figures 6a and 6b is potentially explained by the additional difficulty in resolving the eye component of the model.…”

“…Gaze awareness does not just mediate verbal communication, but rather, is a complex channel of communication in its own right (Vertegaal et al, 2001) (Otsuka et al, 2005). It also governs those who are involved in the communication at any one time (Roberts et al, 2013). Physical communication channels extend beyond the face (Nguyen & Canny, 2009) and include both micro (shrugs, hands and arms), and macro movement of the upper body (Ekman, 1993).…”

A Mixed Reality Telepresence System for Collaborative Space Operation

“…However, when what is being responded to is out of view or delayed, the meaning of the response may be lost [1]. At the same time, it is difficult to capture mutual eye gaze, as the camera and display cannot share the same physical position in the space and the user can only look at one of them at a time [6]. On the other hand, VR, in its purer form, immerses people in 3D computer graphics, tracking some of their movements and hence capturing some of the NVC of the user.…”

Removing the Mask - Do People Over Trust Avatars Reconstructed from Video?

“…These approaches attempt to faithfully reproduce appearance, not just movement. Popular 3D reconstruction approaches in this area are shape-from-silhouette [31] and depth-based [32,33]. Both impact on the quality of reproduction in different ways.…”