“This” and “That” in Teleshopping with Possessive Telepresence Systems using 5G Mobile Networks

With the growth of communication technology, it has become possible to use telepresence systems to allow people to feel present when they are in a remote location. The way that people in remote locations share knowledge and act together toward people in local locations can be thought of as the possession of people in remote locations by people in local locations. Therefore, by using possession, users can consume the service as if they were two people. In this paper, we propose a possession-based teleshopping system that allows a person with the intention to purchase something in a remote location to possess a person wearing an MR-HMD in a local location, thereby enabling a local purchasing experience. To carry out this study, we visited a clothes shop, a convenience store, and a movie theater using two patterns of communication lines over 4G and 5G, where the remote possessor instructed the local possessee to do the shopping. The fieldwork revealed that the possessee could respond flexibly to the possessor’s directive words such as “this” and “that” due to the ease of sharing visibility. In addition, because the possessee was able to accurately convey visual information such as the price and color of the product, the possessor was able to make smoother purchasing decisions, and the possessee was able to make payments and perform other tasks without delay. Furthermore, the relationship between the possessor and the possessee was such that they were able to compensate for each other’s lack of knowledge. As a result, the possession system makes it possible to perform a task with the knowledge of two people, even though they appear to be one person face-to-face with other people in economic activities.