"You AR' right in front of me": RGBD-based capture and rendering for remote training

Abstract

Immersive technologies such as virtual reality have enabled novel forms of education and training, where students can learn new skills in simulated environments. But some specialized training procedures, e.g. ESA-certified soldering, still involve real-world physical processes with physical lab equipment. Such training sessions require students to travel to teaching labs and may interrupt everyday commitments for a longer period of time. There is a desire to make such training procedures more accessible remotely while keeping any student-to-teacher interaction natural, personal, and engaging. This paper presents a prototype for a remote teaching use case by rendering 3D photorealistic representations into the Augmented Reality (AR) glasses of a student. The teacher is captured with a modular RGBD capture application integrated into a web-based immersive communication platform. The integration offers multiple real-time capture calibration and rendering configurations. Our modular platform allows for an easy evaluation of different technical constraints as well as easy testing of the use case itself. Such evaluation may include a direct comparison of different 3D point-cloud and mesh rendering techniques. Additionally, the overall system allows immersive interaction between the student and the teacher, including augmented text messages for non-intrusive notifications. Our platform offers an ideal testbed for both technical and user-centered immersive communication studies.