Image layout and camera-human positioning scheme for communicative collaboration

Abstract

In collaborative videoconferencing systems, the lack of gaze awareness between remotely located participants degrades the effectiveness of visual communication. This is because the position of camera and remotely located partners on the screen are not relative to produce the communicative gaze direction. Various elaborate researches have been proposed to solve this problem with the increase in difficulty for hardware implementation or software analysis. We have overcome these expensive alternatives by developing the image layout and camera-human positioning scheme that identify the position of camera, participants and remotely located partners on the screen relative to each other. The proposed approach allows the conversations to flow more natural as the visual attention of another person to any others can be recognized, providing a sense of more visually being together in collaborative activity.