EMCE: a multimodal environment augmenting conferencing experiences

To illustrate research regarding how to augment people´s experiences in office meetings of different types, we have developed EMCE (Enhanced Multimodal Conferencing Environment), a prototypical conference room. EMCE assists meeting participants in performing a host of functions, including (but not limited to) passing private messages, taking electronic notes, accessing personal files, writing both public and private annotations on projected objects, automatically creating meeting minutes, and remote conferencing. Our multimodal approach allows people to interact with the conference room through spoken or handwritten commands and drawn information. The room reacts in a multimedia fashion, outputting sound, video, text, etc. To make EMCE´s use as intuitive as possible, our interface consists of a virtual view of the conference room that users can access either with screens embedded in a conference table or on their personal laptops. Our goal is to create an augmented environment that is as natural and easy to use as existing, nonaugmented meeting environments