With the recent development of high-speed broadband Internet and 2D video education system, an interactive real-time education system has been built and used. The video education system is a system through which teachers and learners can interact with each other by their direct and personal communications, and the transfer of multimedia data such as text, audio and video. Since the 2D video education system implements education simply through the users’ faces and voices, however, there is a lack of interactive elements between the users, and they cannot have experiential education and learning due to its lack of experiential contents.
In order to resolve the problems, in this paper, we attempt to promote the sense of reality and commitment level in the learners by analyzing the methods to improve the interactions between the learners, and also design and implement a new gesture interface-based interactive 3D video education system applying the advantage of these methods.
The proposed system constructs a 3D virtual environment similar to a real space by applying the user’s image extracted through a motion sensor to a 3D character model so that they could make realistic image communications. Also, we developed a gesture input mode using the movement of both hands extracted through the motion sensor, and applied that to the proposed system so as to allow the user to control the overall input function through gesture. In addition, educational features of the proposed system include: presentations for teachers’ lectures, file sharing and experiential learning through a simulation system of the 3D virtual environment.
In the experimental results of the proposed system, 64% or more users were satisfied with the system, and when less than 25 users access a server (CPU: Intel Xeon 2.33GHz, RAM: 8.00GB, Network: 100M), visual communication and voice communication of 24 frames per second were possible. In addition, 78% of advanced users and 64% of unskilled users for a gesture interface could make the interactions they wanted.