Simple Setup
ViiBoard uses only an RGBD camera (Microsoft Kinect), mounted on the side of a large touch display, to enhance user interaction and enable 3D immersive collaboration in a desirable form factor, practical for home or office use.
ViiBoard uses vision techniques to significantly enhance the user experience on large touch displays (e.g. Microsoft Perceptive Pixel) in two areas: human computer interaction and immersive remote collaboration.
Part I: Vision-enhanced Interaction
ViiBoard augments the touch input with visual understanding to improve the interaction with a large touch-sensitive display. Through visual analysis, the system understands where the user is, who the user is, and what the user is doing even before the user touches the display. Using these information, ViiBoard provides a set of powerful tools for designing and developing applications with better user experience around large touch displays. ViiBoard enables the following six features: (a) user distinction, (b) body centered UI , (c) hand distinction, (d) hand gesture, (e) hand hover, and (f) pointing.
Part II: Immersive Remote Collaboration
ViiBoard also provides an immersive telepresence experience around remote whiteboard collaboration. Using 3D processing of the depth images, life-sized rendering, and novel visualizations, ViiBoard emulates writing side-by-side on a physical whiteboard, or alternatively on a mirror. User studies involving four different tasks show that compared to standard video conferencing with a digital whiteboard, ViiBoard provides participants with a quantitatively better ability to estimate their remote partners’ eye gaze direction, gesture direction, intention, and level of agreement. Moreover, these quantitative capabilities translate qualitatively into a heightened sense of being together and a more enjoyable experience.