Demo 5: Gaze-Activated Mixed Reality Mobile Media Browser for Virtual Reality Television

This paper describes a mixed reality (MR) media browser that utilizes only the user’s gaze for interacting, opening, playing, and pausing 360-degree VR televisual films. The system enables hands-free interaction that activates the passive spectator by encouraging them to move about the physical world. As they shift their gaze, they engage with content in the MR environment and initiate VR films. This affords an immersive media browsing experience via a stylized MR scene with 3D-objects as representations of VR videos. The system is illustrative of a unique interaction design paradigm that augments the user’s gaze as a functional touch event. Its development aligns with current trends in interactive television in which screens are being replaced by goggles. It has been developed for Georgia Tech’s Argon AR Browser for the iPhone and can be viewed via a HUD such as Google Cardboard.