Clonemator: Composing Spatiotemporal Clones to Create Interactive Automators in Virtual Reality

Clonemator is a virtual reality (VR) system allowing users to create their avatar clones and configure them spatially and temporally, forming automators to accomplish complex tasks. In particular, clones can (1) freeze at a user's body pose as static objects, (2) synchronously mimic the user's movement, and (3) replay a sequence of the user's actions in a period of time later. Combined with traditional techniques such as scaling, positional rearrangement, group selection, and duplication, Clonemator enables users to iteratively develop customized and reusable solutions by breaking down complex tasks into a sequence of collaborations with clones. This bypasses implementing dedicated interaction techniques or scripts while allowing flexible interactions in VR applications. We demonstrate the flexibility of Clonemator with several examples and validate its usability and effectiveness through a preliminary user study. Finally, we discuss the potential of Clonemator in VR applications such as gaming mechanisms, spatial interaction techniques, and multi-robot control and provide our insights for future research.