Using Game controller for Relaying Deictic Gestures in Computer Mediated Communication

In computer mediated communication, participants often experience a loss of
information that would have been conveyed by non-verbal means in a face-
to-face communication. They need to compensate for this loss by being more
verbose which may have a negative impact on the e ciency of communica-
tion or give rise to misunderstandings. In this paper, we present a computer
system that augments the imagery perceived from the remote site with addi-
tional visual information and that can be controlled very simply by using a
Nintendo Wiimote game controller. Our user tests show that this system is
able to partially compensate for the information typically lost in conventional
video conferencing where deictic gestures cannot be relayed properly to the
remote site. Concerning user acceptance, our user tests also show that the
visualization technique is crucial which is used for highlighting the objects or
persons that are being pointed at. Adequate visualization techniques based
on non-photorealistic rendering are proposed.