A virtual 3D mobile guide in the INTERMEDIA project

In this paper, we introduce a european re- search pro ject, interactive media with personal networked devices (INTERMEDIA) in which we seek to progress beyond home and device-centric convergence toward truly user-centric convergence of multimedia. Our vision is The User as Multimedia Central: the user as the point at which multimedia services and the means for interact- ing with them converge. This paper proposes the main research goals so that users can be provided with a per- sonalized interface and content independently of physical networked devices, space and time. As a case study, we describe an indoors, mobile mixed reality guide system: Chloe@University. With a see-through head-mounted dis- play (HMD) connected to a small wearable computing device, Chloe@University provides users with an efficient way of guiding in a building. A 3D virtual character in front of the user guides him/her to the required destina- tion.