A distributed remote presence system masking the effects of delays in human-to-human remote interaction

Abstract

This dissertation presents MultiStage, a human-to-human interaction system meant to be use by actors on a stage to interact and perform with actors on other stages as if they were on the same stage. MultiStage includes several local side stages and a global side. It uses a publish-subscribe model to handle the handover of data streams. Local side produces data streams about actors to global side. Local sides also subscribe to data streams from global side to create remote presence about actors. Global side receives data streams and sends data streams back to the local side according to subscriptions. When actors interact with remote actors, the system amplifies actors’ actions by adding text and animations to the remote presences. When the remote presences lag behind too much because of network and processing delays, the system applies various techniques to mask the effects of delays, including switching rapidly to a prerecorded video or animations of individual actors.

Another use of the MultiStage video distribution model is called pVD. The Personal Video Distribution (pVD) system supports sending and viewing live and stored videos between any of a single user’s computers, and allows for a smooth handover of play back between computers. The system avoids any third parties, and relies only on the user’s personal computers. The architecture is comprised of functionality for sending videos, subscribing to videos, and maintaining the video playback state. The design has a local side sending and viewing videos, and a global side coordinating the switching and distribution of videos, and maintaining subscriptions and video state. A set of experiments was conducted to document the performance of the prototype. The results show that pVD global side has low CPU usage, and supports a handful of simultaneous exchanges of videos on a wireless network.