Towards the Physical Instantiation of Virtual People and Components in Physical Mixed-Reality Tele-Presence Environments

Interaction between virtual and physical worlds is an area of growing importance as technology increases the amount of virtualization in our lives. However, to-date, most of this work has focused on translating the physical world into a virtual representation, with little attention being paid to instantiating the virtual in the physical world. This paper addresses this latter issue. In particular we examine how a virtual student can be given a presence in a real smart classroom in order to have better interaction with local students within a shared environment. In this 'work-in-progress' (concept) paper, we propose a novel augmented-reality based approach that identifies and synchronises the remote and local environmental states (people and environment) so as to provide a more naturalistic mixed reality shared environment.