Overlapping and synchronizing two worlds

Recently social network services in virtual space become popular. In particular, virtual reality services such as Second Life™ provide a very realistic environment for social networking. With recent advances in sensor technologies and mobile devices, several services of augmented reality are also being developed and provided. In this demo, we show a prototype, which connects these two different worlds - virtual reality and augmented reality - so that a user in real world and an avatar in a virtual space communicate for location-based social network. The prototype is implemented with Second Life for virtual space and augmented reality functions of smart phones and tracking sensors. It provides three basic functions. First, a given indoor space in real world is reflected in virtual space. Second the user in the real indoor space is tracked and her/his location is mapped into the virtual space, and at the same time, the location and movement of avatar in the virtual space are also mapped to the real world and shown via smart phone. Third, two users in the same area, a user in the real world and an avatar in the virtual space, can communicate by exchanging messages via dialog box in virtual space and short message service of smart phones. We expect that this prototype will be extended to provide enhanced and flexible social networking services.