Abstract
In spite of the progress made in tele conferencing over the last decades, however, it is still far from a resolved issue. In this work, we present an intuitive video teleconferencing system, namely - Embodied Tele-Presence System (ETS) which is based on embodied interaction concept. This work proposes the results of a user study considering the hypothesis: "Embodied interaction based video conferencing system performs better than the standard video conferencing system in representing nonverbal behaviors, thus creating a 'feeling of presence' of a remote person among his/her local collaborators". Our ETS integrates standard audio-video conferencing with mechanical embodiment of head gestures of a remote person (as nonverbal behavior) to enhance the level of interaction. To highlight the technical challenges and design principles behind such tele-presence systems, we have also performed a system evaluation which shows the accuracy and efficiency of our ETS design. The paper further provides an overview of our case study and an analysis of our user evaluation. The user study shows that the proposed embodied interaction approach in video teleconferencing increases 'in-meeting interaction' and enhance a 'feeling of presence' among remote participant and his collaborators.