Extended Reality (XR) telepresence promises to bring remote instruction closer to the fidelity of in-person guidance by enabling fine-grained visual and spatial cues. However, it remains unclear which representation modality is most effective in supporting hands-on training tasks. This paper presents an exploratory comparative investigation of three such modalities (2D chroma-key compositing, stereoscopic 3D, or RGB-D mesh holograms) within a unified XR telepresence prototype. Through a small-scale study (N=12, 6 pairs of students–teachers) in which a remote instructor guided a trainee through a LEGO assembly task, we evaluated perceived visual quality, overall experience, usability, presence and task time. Our early findings suggest that robust 2D chroma-key compositing currently provides clearer visual guidance than imperfect volumetric reconstruction, while stereoscopic 3D sits between the two. This paper discusses system design considerations, initial empirical insights, and open research challenges for XR remote training. The work is intended as a contribution to ongoing workshop discussions on the evaluation and design of XR telepresence systems.

The lack of skilled workforce also creates new challenges specifically for training and (re)certification of the needed professionals.Extended Reality (XR) technology has emerged as a promising way to improve and enhance education and training.However, with the complexity of technical tasks in manufacturing and other industries, it is not always clear how XR can help in different professional trainings.Therefore, we present our prototype "Ready Learner One" as a means to support both the teaching and quality evaluations of complex technical tasks in a generic way.Our approach utilized 3D stereoscopic capture of the student's and teacher's work surface and presents a fused (blended) view in an Augmented Reality headset (hololens 2) for remote interaction.We utilize a Lego block building task as an example to illustrate our approach.Finally, our prototype will be demonstrated at the ACM IMX 2025 conference as a remote connection between Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and The Hague (Netherlands).

Due to the current pandemic, the elderly in care homes are greatly affected by the lack of contact with their families, resulting in various mental conditions (e.g., depression, feelings of loneliness) and deterioration of mental health for dementia patients. In response, residents and family members increasingly resorted to mediated communication to maintain social contact. To facilitate high-quality mediated social contact between residents in nursing homes and remote family members, we developed an Augmented Reality (AR)-based communication tool. The proposed demonstrator improved this situation by providing a working communication tool that enables the elderly to feel being together with their family by means of AR techniques. A complete end-to-end-chain architecture is defined, where the aspects of capture, transmission, and rendering are thoroughly investigated to fit the purpose of the use case. Based on an extensive user study comprising user experience (UX) and quality of service (QoS) measurements, each module is presented with the improvements made and the resulting higher quality AR communication platform.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many nursing homes had to restrict visitations. This had a major negative impact on the wellbeing of residents and their family members. In response, residents and family members increasingly resorted to mediated communication to maintain social contact. To facilitate high-quality mediated social contact between residents in nursing homes and remote family members, we developed an augmented reality (AR)-based communication tool. In this study, we compared the user experience (UX) of AR-communication with that of video calling, for 10 pairs of residents and family members. We measured enjoyment, spatial presence and social presence, attitudes, behavior and conversation duration. In the AR-communication condition, residents perceived a 3D projection of their remote family member onto a chair placed in front of them. In the video calling condition, the family member was shown using 2D video. In both conditions, the family member perceived the resident in the video calling mode on a 2D screen. While residents reported no differences in their UX between both conditions, family members reported higher spatial presence for the AR-communication condition compared to video-calling. Conversation durations were significantly longer during AR-communication than during video calling. We tentatively suggest that there may be (unconscious) differences in UX during AR-based communication compared to video calling.