Effects of Room-sized Sharing on Remote Collaboration on Physical Tasks

This paper outlines some of the benefits of providing remote users with consistent spatial referencing across sites when collaborating on physical tasks. Two video-mediated technologies are introduced: room-sized sharing that enables remote users to see similar things to what they would actually see if in the same room and a snapshot function that enables users to gesture at remote objects. We examine the impact of these technologies by comparing remote collaboration on physical tasks in a regular video conferencing system with a handy camera versus a room duplication system versus a room duplication system with a snapshot function. Results indicate that room-sized sharing facilitates remote collaborators' sense of co-presence and supports remote gesturing, which is closely aligned to normal co-present gesturing. Although such benefits did not contribute directly to the overall decrease of task performance, room-sized sharing and the snapshot function helped remote collaborators construct appropriate messages, efficiently establish joint focus, and monitor each others' comprehension when conducting complicated physical tasks.