HandsinAir: a wearable system for remote collaboration on physical tasks

Abstract

Many real world scenarios involve a remote helper guiding a local worker performing manipulations of physical objects (physical tasks). Technologies and systems have been developed to support such collaborations. However, existing systems often confine collaborators in fixed desktop settings. Yet, there are many situations in which collaborators are mobile and/or desktop settings are not possible to set up. In this paper, we present HandsInAir, a real-time collaborative wearable system for remote collaboration. HandsInAir is designed to support mobility of both the worker and the helper and to provide easy access to remote expertise. In particular, this system implements a novel approach that allows helpers to perform hand gestures in the air and frees two hands of workers for object operations. We describe the system and an evaluation of it and envision future work.