Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Yumi Murakami

Hiroya Tanigawa

Gen Suzuki

Shohei Sugawara

Machio Moriuchi

Yasuhiro Nakajima

Hiroyuki Arita

Yoshio Nagashima

A plurality of terminals are connected to a server via a communication network and share a predetermined common virtual space. The terminals each send to the server the position coordinates of the viewing point and direction of eyes of its user in the virtual space, and the visual field image viewed from that viewing point is displayed on a display. Based on the position coordinates and direction of eyes of the avatar each of the other terminals received from each of the other terminals via the server, each terminal generates an avatar image in the specified direction and at the specified position and displays it in the visual field. The server is always supplied with the latest position information of the avatar from every terminal and, when the distance between two arbitrary avatars becomes smaller than a threshold value, connects speech channels of the two terminals corresponding to these avatars.

Virtual space apparatus with avatars and speech

Growing community of inventors

Yokosuka, Japan

Yumi Murakami