Onomatopoeia Expressions for Intuitive Understanding of Remote Office Situation

• Published in: Virtual Augmented and Mixed Reality. Designing and Developing Augmented and Virtual Environments pp. 351 - 358
• Main Authors: Higa, Kyota, Ishikawa, Masumi, Nomura, Toshiyuki
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: audio/video signal; collaborative work; onomatopoeia; remote office situation
• ISBN: 9783642394041; 3642394043
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-39405-8_39

This paper proposes a system for intuitive understanding of remote office situation using onomatopoeia expressions. Onomatopoeia (imitative word) is a word that imitates sound or movement. This system detects office events such as “conversation” or “human movement” from audio and video signals of remote office, and converts them to onomatopoeia texts. Onomatopoeia texts are superimposed on the office image, and sent to the remote office. By using onomatopoeia expressions, the office event such as “conversation” and “human movement” can be compactly expressed as just one word. Thus, people can instantly understand remote office situation without watching the video for a while. Subjective experimental results show that easiness of event understanding is statistically significantly improved by the onomatopoeia expressions compared to the video at 99% confidence level. We have developed a prototype system with two cameras and eight microphones, and then have exhibited it at ultra-realistic communications forum in Japan. In the exhibition, the concept of this system was favorably accepted by visitors.