1Establishing Remote Conversations Through Eye Contact With Physical Awareness Proxies

We present a mechanism for initiating mediated conversations through eye contact. An eyePHONE is a physical proxy of a remote individual that senses and conveys attention using an eye tracking device and a pair of actuated eyeballs. Users may initiate calls by jointly looking at each other’s eyePHONE. We discuss how this allows participants to implement some of the basic social rules of face-to-face conversations in mediated conversations