ARChat: A Rapid Prototyping Platform for Augmented Communication

Copyright 2023 Google LLC

ARChat is a research project written in TypeScript and JavaScript and aims to render live captions and relevant images directly onto the camera stream for online video conferences. It is an example Chrome Plugin that helps developers and researchers to prototype novel AR experiences with real-time and real-world conversations. ARChat is firstly introduced in our ACM CHI 2023 paper, entitled "Visual Captions: Augmenting Verbal Communication With On-the-fly Visuals", and is also used in "Modeling and Improving Text Stability in Live Captions" and "Rapsai: Accelerating Machine Learning Prototyping of Multimedia Applications Through Visual Programming". Please cite ARChat as follows if you find it useful in your projects:

@inproceedings{Liu2023Visual,
  title = {{Visual Captions: Augmenting Verbal Communication With On-the-fly Visuals}},
  author = {Liu, Xingyu and Kirilyuk, Vladimir and Yuan, Xiuxiu and Chi, Peggy and Chen, Xiang and Olwal, Alex and Du, Ruofei},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {ACM},
  series = {CHI},
  doi = {10.1145/3544548.3581566},
}

Chrome Plugin Key

Before running this plugin, you need to apply a Chrome plugin key by following this page. Then replace line 5 in manifest.json with your own key.

Getting Started

Install node.js if you haven't done so. Here is a tutorial

For the first time, run

npm install

Next, run the following command to build the Chrome plugin:

npm run build

API Keys

To run Visual Captions, you need to provide your own API keys in api_keys.ts file for the extension to work properly. Without API keys, you can also experience live captions in video conferences as instructed below:

To install the plugin

1. Open a Chrome browser and navigate to chrome://extensions/.
2. Enable Developer mode on the top right corner of the Extensions page.
3. Click Load unpacked and select the output folder of this file as a Chrome extension.
4. Go to https://meet.google.com and start a new meeting.
5. Open one and ONLY ONE Google Meet page (e.g., https://meet.google.com/new) Refresh gMeet page if you are already in a gMeet.
6. Enable Google Meet Captions by pressing ‘c’ in the keyboard if the captions are not shown in the bottom.
7. (optional) Press ‘cmd -’ to zoom out the gMeet page to 80% or less so that more captions could be captured by ARChat in gMeet.
8. Click the “three-dots” button in Google Meet, then click Settings->Video->Camera to open the “Settings” page, select “ARChat Virtual Camera” from the drop-down list of cameras.
9. (optional) You may tweak the settings of ARChat in the option page of the plugin. See the pictures below. E.g., Use Meet Captions to “Everyone” to summarize lectures and “yourself” to visualize your speech. For 1:1 talk, set sending resolution to 720p in gMeet for the best experience when possible. Set background image to Camera.

Directory Structure

Main directories:

• background contains the script that runs persistently.
• content contains the main front-end script.
• scenes contains the major scenes (apps or effects) to apply onto GVC cameras.
• models contains interfaces or wrappers of machine learning models.
• output contains the compiled plugin, which is not included in the Git.
• options contains the settings in the extension's option page.

An output folder will be generated after building the plugin.

How to add a new scene

1. Copy PassThrough folder into a new folder of your use case and add logic there.
2. Change the class name of your scene.
3. (optional) Add new machine learning models into the models folder.
4. Add your scene script to background/background.ts by searching the #NewScene hashtag:

References

ARChat has been leveraged in the following research projects. Consider citing our Visual Captions paper and related works when appropriate:

Xingyu "Bruce" Liu, Vladimir Kirilyuk, Xiuxiu Yuan, Peggy Chi, Xiang "Anthony" Chen, Alex Olwal, and Ruofei Du. 2023. Visual Captions: Augmenting Verbal Communication With On-the-fly Visuals. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581566

Ruofei Du, Na Li, Jing Jin, Michelle Carney, Scott Miles, Maria Kleiner, Xiuxiu Yuan, Yinda Zhang, Anuva Kulkarni, Xingyu "Bruce" Liu, Ahmed Sabie, Sergio Escolano, Abhishek Kar, Ping Yu, Ram Iyengar, Adarsh Kowdle, and Alex Olwal. 2023. Rapsai: Accelerating Machine Learning Prototyping of Multimedia Applications Through Visual Programming. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581338 (Best Paper Honorable Mention)

Xingyu "Bruce" Liu, Jun Zhang, Leonardo Ferrer, Susan Xu, Vikas Bahirwani, Boris Smus, Alex Olwal, and Ruofei Du. 2023. Modeling and Improving Text Stability in Live Captions. Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585609

@inproceedings{Liu2023Visual,
  title = {{Visual Captions: Augmenting Verbal Communication With On-the-fly Visuals}},
  author = {Liu, Xingyu and Kirilyuk, Vladimir and Yuan, Xiuxiu and Chi, Peggy and Chen, Xiang and Olwal, Alex and Du, Ruofei},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {ACM},
  series = {CHI},
  doi = {10.1145/3544548.3581566},
}

@inproceedings{Liu2023Modeling,
  title = {{Modeling and Improving Text Stability in Live Captions}},
  author = {Liu, Xingyu and Zhang, Jun and Ferrer, Leonardo and Xu, Susan and Bahirwani, Vikas and Smus, Boris and Olwal, Alex and Du, Ruofei},
  booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {ACM},
  series = {CHI EA},
  doi = {10.1145/3544549.3585609},
}

@inproceedings{Du2023Rapsai,
  title = {{Rapsai: Accelerating Machine Learning Prototyping of Multimedia Applications Through Visual Programming}},
  author = {Du, Ruofei and Li, Na and Jin, Jing and Carney, Michelle and Miles, Scott and Kleiner, Maria and Yuan, Xiuxiu and Zhang, Yinda and Kulkarni, Anuva and Liu, Xingyu and Sabie, Ahmed and Escolano, Sergio and Kar, Abhishek and Yu, Ping and Iyengar, Ram and Kowdle, Adarsh and Olwal, Alex},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {ACM},
  series = {CHI},
  doi = {10.1145/3544548.3581338},
}