Empathy Glasses

In this paper, we describe Empathy Glasses, a head worn prototype designed to create an empathic connection between remote collaborators. The main novelty of our system is that it is the first to combine the following technologies together: (1) wearable facial expression capture hardware, (2) eye tracking, (3) a head worn camera, and (4) a see-through head mounted display, with a focus on remote collaboration. Using the system, a local user can send their information and a view of their environment to a remote helper who can send back visual cues on the local user's see-through display to help them perform a real world task. A pilot user study was conducted to explore how effective the Empathy Glasses were at supporting remote collaboration. We describe the implications that can be drawn from this user study.