Distance skill learning with special attention paid to the nonverbal aspect

Nonverbal communication plays a very important role especially in the Asian countries. But most of the conventional systems developed so far are oriented toward verbal or text based communications and even if they permit tranfer of motional images, it is still very difficult for a teacher and a student to share the perspective and points of focus because motional images are not well structured and codified. The nonverbal communication is very important, too, in that it is closely associated with manufacturing. The importance of motional skill in manufacturing cannot be overemphasized. For example, if we consider assembly or other manufacturing processes, and wish to integrate them with design, the intelligent coding of these processes is a prerequisite. We developed a prototype system with an illustrative example of skill learning penmanship. The motion or movement of a student´s pen is checked against the standard motion data of a teacher in terms of the tip location and tilt of a pen by measuring these data in 3 D using Fastrk and warnings and guidance are given in the form of sounds. The experiments show the effectiveness of the approach, although there are still many problems to be solved in the future. We also developed a client/server system to fully utilize the advantage of the present approach