Parallel Eyes

Exploring Human Capability and Behaviors with Paralleled First Person View Sharing

本プロジェクトは、YCAM (山口情報芸術センター)との共同研究です。
Research Collaboration with YCAM (The Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media).

What if we could directly connect our sight and share it with other people. Can we extend our embodiment? complement our memory? and extend our perception?

Our research explores how humans can understand and develop viewing behaviors with mutual paralleled first person view sharing in which a person can see others’ first person video perspectives as well as their own perspective in realtime. We developed a paralleled first person view sharing system which consists of multiple video see-through head mounted displays and an embedded eye tracking system. With this system, four persons can see four shared first person videos of each other. We then conducted workshop based research with two activities, drawing pictures and playing a simple chasing game with our view sharing system. Our results show that 1) people can complement each other’s memory and decisions and 2) people can develop their viewing behaviors to understand their own physical embodiment and spatial relationship with others in complex situations. Our findings about patterns of viewing behavior and design implications will contribute to building design experience in paralleled view sharing applications.

Parallel Eyes system

Four shared paralleled perspective
Parallel Eyes system is a technology probe for creating a mutual visual shared parallel experience. Users wear a head-mounted display which shows shared videos of each other’s perspectives as well as one’s own perspective in real-time.

Who watches whose sight.
For realtime observation, the reflection upon behaviors, and post analysis, we embedded a small IR camera and IR-LED into the head mounted smartphone goggles to capture the single eye image. Then we implemented an eye tracking system with standard computer vision pupil detection. This allows researchers and audience of the workshops to observe and interpret the relationship between behavior of participants and eye movement. Therefore, we can carefully observed what they do as they consciously and what is happening unconsciously.

Drawing with faint memory

Can you draw“the Statue of Liberty”?  without any hints but others perspective.
No one would draw with complete confidence, even it’s well-known landmarks or popular animals. However, if we could share our perspective each other, can WE draw it with OUR memory? Our researches revealed that participants referred to each other and complemented the elements of each other’s drawings.

Game of tag

I see that I am chased.
We human usually have a sense of own body with own perspective. However, what if technology one day connects our perspective each other, can we acquire and develop behaviors with new form of perspectives? We designed the “game of tag” with Parallel Eyes in which participants play a simple chasing game in a specially designed field. Observation of actual games revealed that people can develop their viewing behaviors to understand their own physical embodiment and spatial relationship with others in complex situations.

Talk / Presentation

Shunichi Kasahara, Mitsuhito Ando, Kiyoshi Suganuma, and Jun Rekimoto. 2016. Parallel Eyes: Exploring Human Capability and Behaviors with Paralleled First Person View Sharing. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1561–1572. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858495

Shunichi Kasahara, Mitsuhito Ando, Kiyoshi Suganuma, and Jun Rekimoto. 2016. Parallel eyes: exploring human capability and behaviors with paralleled first person view sharing. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2016 VR Village (SIGGRAPH ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 16, 1–2. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2929490.2929495

Exhibition

• Ginza Sony Park #004, 未来の銀座の運動会, Parallel Eyes, 2018.12.22 – 2019.1.27, Tokyo Japan.
• Talk Session, 田中章浩・渡邊克巳・大崎智史・笠原俊一・西田宗千佳, トークセッション「ヴァーチャル世界でワタシはどうなる？」, 日本科学未来館 5階コ・スタジオ, 日本未来館. 2018/07/29, Tokyo Japan.
• Exhibition, SXSW 2017, Sony The WOW Factory, Interactive Festival, 3/12 – 3.14, Austin, Texas
• Exhibition, Nico Nico Chokaigi (ニコニコ超会議) 2016, Parallel Eyes, at Makuhari Messe, Japan
• Exhibition, TOKYO GAME SHOW 2016, Parallel Eyes, September 15 to 18 at Makuhari Messe, Japan