EyeGaze: Facilitating eye contact in a video mediated setting

Nielsen, Thomas Søndersø ; Smedegård, Jacob Haubach ; Jensen, Anne Kathrine

4. term

Computer Science, Master

2013

2013-06-17

38

Denne afhandling præsenterer EyeGaze, en ny måde at holde videoopkald på, som gør øjenkontakt mere naturlig. I almindelige videosystemer sidder kameraet typisk over eller ved siden af skærmen. Derfor kan man ikke samtidig se på personen på skærmen og kigge direkte ind i kameraet, hvilket svækker oplevelsen af gensidig øjenkontakt. EyeGaze løser dette ved at vise den anden person fra dit eget synspunkt. Systemet sporer, hvor din hovedposition er, og gengiver den anden person, som om kameraet sad bag skærmen på den linje, du kigger langs. For at opnå dette bruger EyeGaze flere 3D-dybdekameraer placeret omkring skærmen til at fange en live 3D-model af personen. Dybdebilleder fra hvert kamera flettes til én samlet 3D-model, som lagres som voxler (3D-pixels) i GPU-hukommelsen (grafikkortets hukommelse). Denne repræsentation gør det nemt at tilføje nye billeder løbende og er robust over for manglende data. Afhandlingens hovedbidrag er to artikler: En teknisk artikel, der beskriver EyeGaze-systemet, sætter det i relation til eksisterende forskning i videomedieret kommunikation og ikke-verbale signaler, gennemgår implementeringen af prototypen og giver en formativ vurdering af ydeevne og kvalitet. Den anden artikel præsenterer et sammenlignende studie med et within-subjects design, hvor de samme deltagere prøvede både EyeGaze og et Skype-videoopkald. Vi opsummerer litteraturen om blikkets rolle i kommunikation og studier af øjenkontakt i virtuelle avatarer, beskriver forsøgets forløb og det spørgeskema, deltagerne udfyldte efter hver session. Resultaterne viser, at EyeGaze gav en markant stærkere oplevelse af øjenkontakt end Skype. Deltagerne rapporterede også en bedre følelse af involvering og turtagning, og der var generelt en positiv bias i svarene til fordel for EyeGaze.

This thesis presents EyeGaze, a new approach to video calls that makes eye contact feel more natural. In conventional systems, the camera sits above or beside the screen, so you cannot look at the person on the screen and into the camera at the same time, which undermines mutual eye contact. EyeGaze addresses this by showing each person from the viewer’s own viewpoint. The system tracks the viewer’s head position and renders the other person as if the camera were behind the screen along the line of sight. To achieve this, EyeGaze uses multiple 3D depth-sensing cameras around the display to capture a live 3D model of the person. Depth frames from each camera are fused into a single 3D model represented as voxels (3D pixels) stored in GPU memory (the graphics processor), which makes it easy to integrate new frames and tolerate missing data. The thesis contributes two papers: a technical paper that situates EyeGaze in prior work on video-mediated communication and nonverbal cues, details the prototype’s design and implementation, and provides a formative assessment of performance and quality; and a comparative user study using a within-subject design in which the same participants tried both EyeGaze and a Skype video call. We summarize literature on the role of gaze in communication and on eye contact in virtual avatars, describe the procedure and post-session questionnaire, and report that EyeGaze produced a significantly stronger sense of eye contact than Skype. Participants also reported better involvement and smoother turn-taking, and responses showed an overall positive bias toward EyeGaze.

[This abstract was generated with the help of AI]

Eye contact ; Video mediated communication ; Microsoft Kinect ; Virtual viewpoint ; Study ; Within-subject ; Video link ; 3D reconstruction ; Voxel ; GPU ; GPGPU ; Graphics ; Empirical study ; Questionnaire ; Comparative study ; 3D scanning ; Skeletal tracking ; Raytracing ; Raycasting ; Head tracking ; Video conferencing ; Texturing ; Skype ; ANOVA ; EyeGaze ; Face gaze ; Gaze direction

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