Immersive Telepresence and Remote Collaboration using Mobile and Wearable Devices.

The mobility and ubiquity of mobile head-mounted displays make them a promising platform for telepresence research asthey allow for spontaneous and remote use cases not possible with stationary hardware. In this work we present a system that providesimmersive telepresence and remote collaboration on mobile and wearable devices by building a live spherical panoramic representationof a user's environment that can be viewed in real time by a remote user who can independently choose the viewing direction. Theremote user can then interact with this environment as if they were actually there through intuitive gesture-based interaction. Eachuser can obtain independent views within this environment by rotating their device, and their current field of view is shared to allow forsimple coordination of viewpoints. We present several different approaches to create this shared live environment and discuss theirimplementation details, individual challenges, and performance on modern mobile hardware; by doing so we provide key insights intothe design and implementation of next generation mobile telepresence systems, guiding future research in this domain. The results ofa preliminary user study confirm the ability of our system to induce the desired sense of presence in its users.