Enhancing Remote Collaboration Through Drone-Driven Agent and Mixed Reality

Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have been used to improve remote collaboration. However, existing MR- or AR-based remote collaboration systems lack of a fully independent view sharing between the local user and remote user. This research propose a novel approach to enhance the remote collaboration using a drone and MR technology. By augmenting a virtual 3D avatar on the drone in the local environment, we propose the drone-driven agent to embody the remote user. And the view sharing between local and remote user is achieved by sending a real-time video stream of the local environment captured with the drone. There are three novelties including 1) fully independent view sharing, 2) augmenting virtual character on the drone to embody remote user, and 3) 3D AR sketching o facilitate communication between local and remote users. We implemented a proof-of-concept prototype to illustrate our design using a see-through type head-mounted display and a small-size drone. In addition, we provide discussion and implication for the future work to design drone-based remote collaboration systems.