Publication

Abstract : With current eLearning systems it has been observed that the remote students experience a palpable experiential divide as compared to the students present at teacher’s location in terms of ease of interaction with the teacher as well as with students of other locations. We synthesize a new architecture for eLearning classrooms capable of bridging the gap between remote and local participants giving a near face to face experience. The new design involves automatic adaption of perspectives of all participants, providing gaze alignment, discerning various interaction patterns, dynamic perspective switching triggered by interaction state changes etc. To achieve this, we have developed a geometry to define gaze directions, classify interactions into states, render multiple perspectives for different participants, we also describe an algorithm for dynamic perspective correction. We have implemented a prototype three classroom design serving as test-bed for experimentation. Results are promising.