With the advancements in Internet based services, the demands for better communication tools became higher in order to fill the distance gaps between people. Especially in our daily activities when we are traveling abroad. The traditional video/audio communication tools became actively available within our reach thanks to smartphone advancements. Internet based conferencing such as “Google Hangouts” made it more reachable by using web-based tools, allowing two or more participants to engage in a social meeting. However, the demand for social tools which allows the participants to move freely in the remote place existed. On one hand, Telepresence robots stepped into the scene to fill that need, also it opened new services to the consumers such as remotely visiting museums or attending exhibitions and conferences. On the other hand, Telexistence systems provided more sophisticated capabilities to the user by replicating several functions of his body into the remote place using mechanical parts. “Virtual Embodied Telexistence” is a system that combines low cost telexistence system with virtually embodied human functions into it. Allowing the user to have an immersive visual feedback of the remote place while being aware of his body via visual representation of it.
“Virtual Embodiment” proposed in this thesis defines the important elements for replacing physical representations of human’s body into a virtual representation, as a way to increase the sense of presence in a different place. Increasing the sense of body presence in telecommunication helps the user to act more naturally and intuitively using his body motion.
This thesis explores the proposed concept of Virtual Embodiment for human’s body and its tight link with presence. The design flow to realize a virtually embodied telexistence system is discussed, as well as the implementation procedure that has been done. We show the efficiency of using this system by objective user evaluation, and how intuitive it is to be used by any user.