enVolve: Are You Listening? Inertial Sensing to Monitor the Involvement of Silent Listeners during an Online Interaction

Understanding the level of participation for a remote attendee in an online meeting setup could significantly improve the quality of experience for virtual interaction. However, gauging audience involvement over an online meeting becomes particularly challenging when the attendees prefer to turn off the cameras. IMU data have shown promising results in the past to pervasively monitor users’ body language, including the determination of various bodily gestures, postures, and facial expressions. This paper demonstrates how earables could help address the stated problem. We provide a motivational study to assess earables for detecting body language corresponding to involved listeners. We further compare it with other sensing modalities like smartwatches and smartphones and accordingly develop a platform called enVolve. A lab-scale study with 17 participants demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed system with an average F1 score of more than .