Space Connection: A New 3D Tele-immersion Platform for Web-Based Gesture-Collaborative Games and Services

The 3D tele-immersion technique has brought a revolutionary change to human interaction-physically apart users can interact naturally with each other through body gesture in a shared 3D virtual environment. The scheme of cloud- or Web-based applications on the other hand facilitates global connections among players without the need to equip with additional devices. To realize Web-based 3D immersion techniques, we propose Space Connection that integrates techniques for virtual collaboration and motion sensing techniques with the aim of pushing motion sensing a step forward to seamless collaboration among multiple users. Space Connection provides not only human-computer interaction but also enables instant human- to-human collaboration with body gestures beyond physical space boundary. Technically, to develop gesture-interactive applications, it requires parsing signals of motion sensing devices, passing network data transformation, and synchronizing states among multiple users. The challenge for developing web-based applications comes from that there is no native library for browser applications to access the application interfaces of motion sensing devices due to the security sandbox policy. We further develop a new socket transmission protocol that provides transparent APIs for browsers and external devices. We develop an interactive pingpong game and a rehabilitation system as two example applications of the presented technique.