TransparentHMD: Revealing the HMD User's Face to Bystanders

Mai, C., Rambold, L. and Khamis, M. (2017) TransparentHMD: Revealing the HMD User's Face to Bystanders. In: 16th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM '17), Stuttgart, Germany, 26-29 Nov 2017, pp. 515-520. ISBN 9781450353786 (doi: 10.1145/3152832.3157813)

Abstract

While the eyes are very important in human communication, once a user puts on a head mounted display (HMD), the face is obscured from the outside world's perspective. This leads to communication problems when bystanders approach or collaborate with an HMD user. We introduce transparentHMD, which employs a head-coupled perspective technique to produce an illusion of a transparent HMD to bystanders. We created a self contained system, based on a mobile device mounted on the HMD with the screen facing bystanders. By tracking the relative position of the bystander using the smartphone's camera, we render an adapting perspective view in realtime that creates the illusion of a transparent HMD. By revealing the user's face to bystanders, our easy to implement system allows for opportunities to investigate a plethora of research questions particularly related to collaborative VR systems.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Keywords: Eyes, face, gaze, head-mounted displays, virtual reality.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Khamis, Dr Mohamed
• Authors: Mai, C., Rambold, L., and Khamis, M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Publisher: ACM
• ISBN: 9781450353786
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia: 515-520
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy