Asymmetric Mixed Reality: Exploring Interaction and Collaboration with Heterogeneous Mixed Reality Technology

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Background

This Special Issue aims to collect research projects around the topic of asymmetric collaboration in Mixed Reality. The goal is to further understand this particular interaction scenario and possibly derive a research agenda with the hope to be able to influence and shape the form of future Mixed Reality technology, realizing its full potential and avoiding potential pitfalls of negatively impacting social interactions.

Mixed Reality technology (in the following we will refer to the full spectrum of the Reality-Virtuality continuum as Mixed Reality, including Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) as being part
of the spectrum) is recently seeing a technological advance in terms of both research and affordable end user products (e.g. Oculus Quest 2, NReal). These extend the current landscape of personal computing devices with head worn and near-eye displays. The resulting heterogeneous display and interaction space (e.g. smartphones, tablets, laptops, large displays and near-eye displays) comes with a set of opportunities and challenges that, in part, arise from the variety and asymmetry of the underlying technology and the resulting differences in user perception and interaction possibilities. 

We define a collaboration to be asymmetric if one or multiple collaborative partners have either a different perception of reality (e.g. sharing the same perception of a virtual world but being physically
located in different environments) or virtuality (e.g. being physically co-located but share a different perception of the virtual content). This asymmetry can occur due to multiple reasons, such as either
having access to different types of technologies in a co-located setting (e.g., VR HMD and non-HMD users, AR HMD and handheld AR users, AR HMD and VR HMD users) and being physically separated (e.g. VR users in an online world share the same virtuality but have an asymmetry around their physical environment) as well as multiple other constellations. While these asymmetric scenarios already occurred in the field of HCI without the usage of HMDs (cross-device interaction), it can be argued that HMDs
exaggerate particular issues such as Isolation and Exclusion.

Isolation occurs when a technology (e.g., VR HMDs) fully occludes one reality from the user (e.g. the physical environment) and by that 'isolates' them from the environment and all the people around them. This isolation does not only have to happen in a co-located setting (e.g. a VR HMD user next to a user without a VR HMD). If multiple users collaborate in an online VR environment, removing the VR HMD is currently isolating a user completely from the virtual world and all the collaborators sharing
this virtual world.

Exclusion occurs whenever information is only accessible to the user through a particular technology (e.g., AR HMD, VR HMD or even hand-held devices) and every user in the environment that is without access to the same technology is partially excluded from this world. In co-located settings this exclusion can even partially occur if different technologies are used to access the same virtual information (e.g. a stereoscopic rendering with an AR HMD may communicate more information to the
user than seeing the same information through a monoscopic smartphone). In a remote setting, exclusion can also happen when a user is currently interacting with their physical environment (e.g. drinking out of a cup) resulting in all the collaborators in the virtual environment being excluded and not fully understanding the current actions of the virtual avatar. 

We welcome submissions of original research and reviews on (but not limited) to the following topics:

- Systems and artifacts to enable asymmetric co-located collaboration for Virtual and Augmented Reality
- User studies exploring opportunities and current challenges of consumers using Augmented and/or Virtual Reality HMDs in co-located collaborative scenarios
- Frameworks and models describing the potential opportunities and challenges of asymmetric collaboration in mixed reality
- Visualization techniques and systems to enable mutual understanding of the physical environment during remote collaborations
- Interaction techniques to improve collaboration and user experience and overcome isolation and/or exclusion in asymmetric mixed reality scenarios
- Tools and systems to improve a mutual understanding the physical and virtual environment during mixed reality collaboration
- Cross-Reality Interaction techniques

Keywords: Asymmetric Interaction, Cross-Reality Interaction, Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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