This project is a collaborative effort between three universities: Purdue, Texas A&M College Station, and Texas A&M Central Texas. We're creating a mixed reality system that allows remote students to join on-campus study groups seamlessly, promoting interactions that let local and remote students interact naturally and effectively.

The main idea is to make remote students feel like they're actually at the study group table. We do this by projecting their life-sized video onto cardboard screens placed in empty seats. This way, the local students interact with them just like they would with anyone else in the room.

The remote students will use a mixed reality headset to see life-sized images of their peers, positioned correctly around them. This setup gives them a real sense of presence and depth perception while still letting them see important elements of their real environment, like their laptop. Unlike virtual reality, which can be disorienting and block out the real world, mixed reality keeps them grounded and reduces the risk of cybersickness. Plus, it makes it easier for them to type and collaborate on shared documents.

With Buenas, all students will see each other at the correct relative location and size, offering benefits like intuitiveness, situational awareness, depth perception, and a greater sense of presence. One of our challenges is to remove the headset from the remote students' video and how to ensure good eye contact.

• Collaborators:

  Edgar J. Rojas-Muñoz, Voicu Popescu, Anitha Chennamaneni, Walter Murphy, Raquel T. Cabrera-Araya & Siyu Huang

• Funding:

  NSF