The Effects of Sharing Awareness Cues in Collaborative Mixed Reality

T. Piumsomboon , A. Dey , B. Ens , G. A. Lee , M. Billinghurst

Frontiers Robotics AI

Remote collaborators struggle when they cannot see where a partner is attending. In a study with 32 users (16 pairs), this paper compared combinations of three awareness cues — a field-of-view frustum, an eye-gaze ray, and a head-gaze ray — against a baseline showing only heads and hands, during a shared find-and-place task. The cues significantly improved performance, usability, and preference, with the field-of-view frustum plus head-gaze ray working best, establishing both the feasibility of room-scale mixed-reality collaboration and the value of these cues.

@article{piumsomboon2019,
  author    = {T. Piumsomboon and A. Dey and B. Ens and G. A. Lee and M. Billinghurst},
  title     = {The Effects of Sharing Awareness Cues in Collaborative Mixed Reality},
  journal = {Frontiers Robotics AI},
  volume    = {6},
  pages     = {5},
  doi       = {10.3389/frobt.2019.00005},
  year      = {2019}
}