Mixed Reality Multi-user Asymmetric Telecollaboration

Creating a seamless mixed reality (MR) collaborative environment to facilitate natural collaboration between multiple remote and local users within a shared physical space is challenging. Existing collaboration technologies, such as 2D and 3D videoconferencing, as well as virtual reality (VR) solutions, fall short of delivering a fully immersive, real-time, and cohesive collaborative experience for multiple users. Remote users often feel disconnected from the shared physical space.

This thesis aims to overcome these limitations by developing a multi-user immersive MR system. The primary objective is to enable remote users to perceive the physical environment and collaborate effectively with local users in real-time.

First, a framework is described that enables local users to live-stream their physical environment to multiple remote users while seamlessly blending 3D virtual assets. This provides a more immersive and interactive collaborative space with minimal latency. The system seamlessly integrates these elements, allowing remote and local users to collaborate within physical spaces as if they were present together.

Second, the effectiveness of the system is evaluated through performance assessments and user studies. The results of these evaluations demonstrate the system's ability to induce various forms of presence among participants in mixed-reality collaboration.

These findings enable a second application that employs a context-aware method for selecting and dynamically switching or highlighting optimal viewpoints based on user actions and the current context. This allows participants to explore the collaboration space from different perspectives. The application is also evaluated, and the results of the evaluation provide insight into enabling effective mixed-perspective collaboration within the multi-user MR system. These findings also show reduced cognitive load and improved task understanding among participants. Thus, it demonstrates its effectiveness in enhancing the collaborative experience.