Collaborative Tele-directing Judith Donath, Dana Spiegel, Matt Lee, Kelly Dobson Sociable Media Group, MIT Media Laboratory Ken Goldberg UC Berkeley

Collaborative Tele-direction Allows a geographically distributed group of people to collaboratively control a shared, remote resource. April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

Example Application: Tele-acting A distributed group of people directs an instrumented person to interact with a remote environment through the remote human agent. April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

A Tele-direction Interface Participants can: Communicate with each other Follow the action Easily create and vote for goals The Requirements of a Tele-direction Interface Purpose of interface is to mediate among directors’ individual goals and to deliver a single direction to the Actor April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

The Directing Community • Graphical Chat environment • Each person is a colored square • Live video and audio onscreen • Create community around live broadcast April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

Setting Goals and Voting Periodic Voting Sessions with and Economy Community based solution for making decisions about what remote agent should do • Video freezes when vote is in session • Votes are timed so they can provide timely direction to Actor • Goals are created by Directors, and are tied to a location on the Actor’s broadcast • Directors can vote for goals by moving onto a circle • Goal reports how many votes it has with rings • Directors can change vote interactively until vote is finished • Community can see which goals are the most or least popular in real-time • Assistant relays winning goal information to Actor • Vote frequency and occurrence is very application specific Allow community to effect what they see Can have other economies beyond the free one implemented here • Costs for creating goals and voting • Rewards for gathering support and winning votes April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

Applications April 4, 2001 CHI 2001 Tele-direction • intention is as an art and entertainment piece • ramifications for tele-robotics • remote collaboration and presence using a human agent Mars Lander • collaborative robotic control • democratic scheme for what gets done Tele-education • similar to Tele-direction, but Actor is not instrumented • help problems with conference style lectures where most interesting questions aren’t asked: the most interesting and popular questions are automatically filtered to the top Collaborative Gaming • different interface issues with specifying and choosing goals • chess can become a much more interesting community game • people peering over your shoulder now have a say April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

Collaborative Gaming Different process for creating goals Different time-course for voting Different level of interaction Different interface issues with specifying and choosing goals Chess can become a much more interesting community game People peering over your shoulder now have a say Specialized Experts (good opener, bad closer) Novices learn by example and discussion !!!Support for longer term goals and for conversation history April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

Implementation Collaboration Server Video Server Director’s Client Java-based server supports generic TeleAction environments Video Server Re-broadcasts Actor’s live A/V stream to Directors Director’s Client Java-based application uses QuickTime to receive Actor’s broadcast Sends and receives chat and vote information to Collaboration Server Actor Laptop in backpack broadcasts live QuickTime A/V stream to Video Server Goals are delivered via an arm-mounted LCD panel Goals are also shown on chest, so other people can know what’s going on April 4, 2001 CHI 2001

http://smg.media.mit.edu/projects/TeleAction April 4, 2001 CHI 2001