Study on Gaze Direction Perception of Face Image Displayed on Rotatable Flat Display

Abstract

A long-standing challenge of video-mediated communication systems is to correctly represent remote participant gaze direction in local environments. A telepresence robot with a movable display that shows the face of a remote participant is a promising approach for solving this issue. Researchers generally consider that display orientation is effective for local participants to properly estimate the gaze direction of remote participants. We investigate how subjects estimate gaze direction of a remote participant ("Looker") when his/her face is displayed on a rotatable flat display. Our experiment reveals that both the Looker's head-eye rotation in the display and display rotation affect subject estimation, but the effect of the display rotation is relatively small. Furthermore, we reveal that subjects tend to overestimate Looker gaze direction. Based on our results, we propose a design implication for a telepresence robot to reduce overestimation and properly represent the remote participant gaze direction.

[Invited Paper] Issues and Solutions to Informal Communication in Working from Home Using a Telepresence Robot

“…In addition, we assumed a scenario where the boss gave two subordinates some comments/instructions that might have had some influence on how they decided to assign priorities. Note that although only two subordinates participated in the experiment, as Kawaguchi et al 82) reported, neither subordinate was able to perceive the gaze direction accurately in the absence of any movement of the display when a face was displayed in a movable flat display. Moreover, the remote boss maintained his gaze by focusing on the center of his display during the experiment.…”

LivingDesktop

“…Finally, actuated displays [6,8,20,42,44,51] have been proposed in different contexts. For instance, TouchMover [44] is a touchscreen mounted onto a rail that exerts forces when users are pushing it in a VR context.…”

“…For instance, TouchMover [44] is a touchscreen mounted onto a rail that exerts forces when users are pushing it in a VR context. In video-conferencing, tablet displays mounted on pan-tilt robotic platform have been proposed to increase immersion and telepresence [8,20,51]. RoCo [6] is a robotic display with 5 degrees of freedom to improve ergonomics.…”

“…For instance, the motions of the monitor are coupled to the head movements of the distant user. This application, inspired by [8,20] makes the telepresence more engaging because it gives natural feeling of head movement as in a face-to-face conversation. While this application relies on an actuated monitor, the next one uses an actuated mouse.…”

Conveying Gaze-Awareness by Using a Faint Light with a Video-Conferencing System

“…Much research has studied conveying eye information captured by re-designed devices, such as displays/screens and cameras (e.g., [11]- [16], etc.). Major techniques of re-designing include changing the direction and angle of each user's display according to their head movement or eyes direction, using one-sided or two-sided transparent displays, using special screens, using life-sized or wall-sized displays, increasing the number of cameras, or a combination of these techniques.…”