Immersive Telepresence for Hybrid Meetings: Gamified Tele-assistance, Museums, and Technical Support

Extended reality has generated great interest in recent years, among other things, due to the potential it has to transmit non-verbal communication and offer solutions to current distancing problems. This work proposes a gamified experience of three use cases that meet real-life scenarios: teleassistance, guided route, and remote technical support. The objective is to solve each of the scenario tasks that involve collaboration between local and remote users through 360-degree video communication. Specifically, 2D and 3D objects hide symbols that local users must decipher with the help of remote users, who have the necessary information to do that. In this way, the technology (360-degree video communication) and additional tools included in the system are tested: a magnifying glass to offer remote users certain areas of the scene with higher quality, visualization of the hands with the headset to make the experience more realistic, and the cartoon avatars to increase perceived social presence during the interaction. This experience considers the needs of real hybrid meeting applications that have been gamified to test 360-degree video communication but apply to other XR technologies.