ThirdEye: Simple Add-on Display to Represent Remote Participant's Gaze Direction in Video Communication.

A long-standing challenge in video-mediated communication systems is to represent a remote participant's gaze direction in local environments correctly. To address this issue, we developed ThirdEye, an add-on eye-display for a video communication system. This display is made from an artificial ulexite (TV rock) that is cut into a hemispherical shape, enabling light from the bottom surface to be projected onto the hemisphere surface. By drawing an appropriate ellipse on an LCD and placing ThirdEye over it, this system simulates an eyeball. Our experiment proved that an observer could perceive a remote Looker's gaze direction more precisely when the gaze was presented using ThirdEye compared to the case in which the gaze was presented using the Looker's face on a flat display.