GIBSON: AR/VR synchronized city walking system

Abstract

GIBSON is a novel city walking system that enables distant users to walk together as if they are physically in the same city. The advancement of virtual reality technology has opened the possibility to travel around the world virtually beyond geographical limitations, but there is still room for improvement to make the experience as realistic as real travel. Unlike conventional virtual travel tools and prior multi-user collaborative XR studies, we designed our system to evoke both a sense of co-presence and a sense of being in the real space. For this purpose, we implemented two main functions: (1) function to transfer real-time audio-visual information of the surroundings and (2) function to transfer body movements of users through avatars. We also combined visual positioning system (VPS) and SLAM to align the user locations. We conducted user testing to verify the experience of cross-AR/VR city walking using GIBSON. The result suggests that our system could make people feel as if they were walking together in the city even though they are physically distanced.