Effect of locomotion style and body visibility of telepresence avatar

Abstract

Telepresence is a method of communication that connects remote users by creating an illusion where users in physically dispersed locations are interacting in the same place. However, in creating this illusion, retargeting the exact motion of the users to their virtual avatars becomes a challenge when the real-world spaces of the users are dissimilar. In this paper, we define this problem, where the remote users' motion and virtual avatars motion is not compatible with the corresponding space causing miscommunication and investigate this question by conducting two user testing. In the user testing, we introduce three different Motion Style (Speed, Glide, and Stride) and Body Visibility (Full Body and Head to Knee Body) to modify the virtual avatar's motions to match the remote user. Our results show that Head to Knee Body could be potentially used in telepresence environment as a new approach to enhance shared presence or shared space experience without interfering interaction between the users. Also, Naturalness had the most influence in Preference thus, when choosing the Motion Style, Naturalness should be considered the most.