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

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10.
April 4, 2001
CHI 2001