VoluProf

Traditional online learning, which provides contents via static video and audio scripts, is limited in its effects since learners can hardly interact with teachers and give any feedback. Mixed Reality (MR) combined with animatable volumetric video has the potential to provide an immersive and interactive learning medium that enables a completely new level of learning experience.

VoluProf aims to develop a user-oriented, interactive MR application that enables discourses between teachers, represented as avatars, and users by means of multimodal chatbots. To achieve this, high-quality volumetric videos of the teachers are generated and animated as a basis for interaction. Voice of the avatar is generated realistically from a text provided by the teacher. The avatar is then streamed to the MR headsets of the learners over next-generation mobile networks using low-latency streaming techniques. The development is continuously accompanied by user studies that investigate the requirements and effects of the new teaching medium. Ethical, legal and social implications are monitored and continously integrated into the technical development.

Project partners:

• Fraunhofer HHI
• Deutsche Telekom AG
• Volucap GmbH
• Aristech GmbH
• University of Rostock
• German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)