Using Empathic Mixed Reality Agents for Remote Collaboration

This paper describes research on using Empathic Mixed Reality Agents (EMiRAs) for enhancing remote collaboration. Adopting Mixed Reality (MR) for remote collaboration is a promising solution which uses virtual avatars and visual cues to allow people to communicate naturally in three-dimensional (3D) MR environments. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) make it possible to form hybrid teams of humans and AI driven virtual agents in MR environments. Forming hybrid teams to enhance human-to-human collaboration could be a promising way to take advantage of the complementary nature of human and AI agents. However, there still needs to be research conducted on how hybrid teams like this can improve MR remote collaboration. My research is focused on designing and evaluating EMiRAs for enhancing human-to-human remote collaboration. In this doctoral consortium presentation, I will introduce the EMiRA concept by identifying the convergence of Empathic Computing, MR and AI Agent. In the paper, I discuss the research motivation, recently published study results and plans for future work.