Eye-tracking for avatar eye-gaze and interactional analysis in immersive collaborative virtual environments

ABSTRACT

Participants' eye-gaze is generally not captured or represented in immersive collaborative virtual environment (ICVE) systems. We present EyeCVE, which uses mobile eye-trackers to drive the gaze of each participant's virtual avatar, thus supporting remote mutual eye-contact and awareness of others' gaze in a perceptually unfragmented shared virtual workspace. We detail trials in which participants took part in three-way conferences between remote CAVE™ systems linked via EyeCVE. Eye-tracking data was recorded and used to evaluate interaction, confirming the system's support for the use of gaze as a communicational and management resource in multiparty conversational scenarios. We point toward subsequent investigation of eye-tracking in ICVEs for enhanced remote social-interaction and analysis.

REFERENCES

• 1: S. Acker and S. Levitt. Designing Videoconference Facilities for Improved Eye Contact. J. Broad. & Elec. Media, 31: 181, 1987.
• 2: M. Argyle and M. Cook. Gaze and Mutual Gaze. Cambridge University Press Cambridge, 1976.
• 3: Jeremy N. Bailenson , Andrew C. Beall , Jack Loomis , Jim Blascovich , Matthew Turk, Transformed Social Interaction: Decoupling Representation from Behavior and Form in Collaborative Virtual Environments, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.13 n.4, p.428-441, August 2004 [doi>10.1162/1054746041944803]
• 4: Jeremy N. Bailenson , Jim Blascovich , Andrew C. Beall , Jack M. Loomis, Equilibrium Theory Revisited: Mutual Gaze and Personal Space in Virtual Environments, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.10 n.6, p.583-598, December 2001 [doi>10.1162/105474601753272844]
• 5: Steve Benford , John Bowers , Lennart E. Fahlén , Chris Greenhalgh , Dave Snowdon, User embodiment in collaborative virtual environments, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.242-249, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223904.223935]
• 6: Milton Chen, Leveraging the asymmetric sensitivity of eye contact for videoconference, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503386]
• 7: S. Duncan. Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversations. Nonverbal Communication: Readings with Commentary, 1974.
• 8: Maia Garau , Mel Slater , Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy , Andrea Brogni , Anthony Steed , M. Angela Sasse, The impact of avatar realism and eye gaze control on perceived quality of communication in a shared immersive virtual environment, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642703]
• 9: E. Gu and N. Badler. Visual Attention and Eye Gaze During Multiparty Conversations with Distractions. Intelligent Virtual Agents, 2006.
• 10: Jörg Hauber , Holger Regenbrecht , Mark Billinghurst , Andy Cockburn, Spatiality in videoconferencing: trade-offs between efficiency and social presence, Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 04-08, 2006, Banff, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/1180875.1180937]
• 11: Ilona Heldal , Anthony Steed , Maria Spante , Ralph Schroeder , Sophia Bengtsson , Marja Partanen, Successes and failures in co-present situations, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.14 n.5, p.563-579, October 2005 [doi>10.1162/105474605774918679]
• 12: Jon Hindmarsh , Mike Fraser , Christian Heath , Steve Benford , Chris Greenhalgh, Object-focused interaction in collaborative virtual environments, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.7 n.4, p.477-509, Dec. 2000 [doi>10.1145/365058.365088]
• 13: Ellen A. Isaacs , John C. Tang, What video can and cannot do for collaboration: a case study, Multimedia Systems, v.2 n.2, p.63-73, Aug. 1994 [doi>10.1007/BF01274181]
• 14: S. Langton, R. Watt, and V. Bruce. Do the eyes have it? Cues to the direction of social attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(2): 50--59, 2000.
• 15: Sooha Park Lee , Jeremy B. Badler , Norman I. Badler, Eyes alive, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.21 n.3, July 2002
• 16: A. Murgia, R. Wolff, W. Steptoe, et al. A Tool For Replay And Analysis of Gaze-Enhanced Multiparty Sessions Captured in Immersive Collaborative Environments. ACM DS-RT '08, 2008.
• 17: Norman Murray , Dave Roberts, Comparison of head gaze and head and eye gaze within an immersive environment, Proceedings of the 10th IEEE international symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real-Time Applications, p.70-76, October 02-04, 2006 [doi>10.1109/DS-RT.2006.13]
• 18: Ken-Ichi Okada , Fumihiko Maeda , Yusuke Ichikawaa , Yutaka Matsushita, Multiparty videoconferencing at virtual social distance: MAJIC design, Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.385-393, October 22-26, 1994, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States [doi>10.1145/192844.193054]
• 19: David Roberts , Robin Wolff , Oliver Otto , Anthony Steed, Constructing a Gazebo: supporting teamwork in a tightly coupled, distributed task in virtual reality, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.12 n.6, p.644-657, December 2003 [doi>10.1162/105474603322955932]
• 20: H. Sacks. Lectures on Conversation. Blackwell, 1995.
• 21: A. Steed, D. Roberts, R. Schroeder, and I. Heldal. Interaction between Users of Immersion Projection Technology Systems. HCI International 2005, the 11th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, pages 22--27, 2005.
• 22: W. Steptoe and A. Steed. High-Fidelity Avatar Eye-Representation. Virtual Reality Conference, 2008. VR '08. IEEE, pages 111--114, 2008.
• 23: Roel Vertegaal, The GAZE groupware system: mediating joint attention in multiparty communication and collaboration, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.294-301, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303065]
• 24: Roel Vertegaal , Ivo Weevers , Changuk Sohn , Chris Cheung, GAZE-2: conveying eye contact in group video conferencing using eye-controlled camera direction, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642702]
• 25: V. Vinayagamoorthy, M. Garau, A. Steed, and M. Slater. An Eye Gaze Model for Dyadic Interaction in an Immersive Virtual Environment: Practice and Experience. Computer Graphics Forum, 23(1): 1--11, 2004.
• 26: R. Wolff, D. Roberts, A. Murgia, et al. Communicating Eye Gaze across a Distance without Rooting Participants to the Spot. ACM DS-RT '08, 2008.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.3 Communications Applications
          Subjects: Computer conferencing, teleconferencing, and videoconferencing

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism
          Subjects: Virtual reality

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
avatars, eye-gaze, eye-tracking, immersive collaborative virtual environments, social presence, telecommunication