US 5,347,306 · Granted 1994-09-13

The 1994 Patent That Imagined Virtual Meeting Rooms Before Zoom

Imagine walking into a digital meeting room where you appear as an animated character of your choosing, and you can see and hear everyone else as animated avatars too — all in real-time 3D. This patent from 1994 describes exactly that: a networked virtual space where people could attend meetings, classes, parties, or auctions by controlling digital characters that mimic their real gestures, voice, and position.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The patent covers a networked system where each participant controls an animated character in a shared 3D virtual space. What's protected is the combination of real-time animation rendering, motion capture through sensors that detect a user's position and gestures, voice input and localization so sound comes from the right avatar, and the ability for each user to choose which character or persona represents them. The system lets multiple remote participants see and interact with each other's animated versions simultaneously.

Why it matters

This patent captures an early vision of virtual collaboration spaces that predates modern video conferencing and virtual reality platforms by years. It was filed in 1993 and granted in 1994, when most people were still using dial-up internet. Mitsubishi Electric's invention anticipated features we now take for granted in gaming, remote work, and metaverse platforms — the idea that people could embody digital avatars and meet in shared virtual rooms was genuinely forward-thinking for its time.

Real-world use

Today, anyone joining a virtual classroom or gaming session where they pick an avatar and see other players as customized characters is experiencing the core concept this patent protected.

Original USPTO abstract

A network-based animated electronic meeting place is provided for business meetings, education, simulated classrooms, casual encounters, personal meetings, art auctions, parties and game playing, which includes a terminal for each participant on the network and local prestored animation graphics, with simulated participants in the form of animated characters or dolls being driven through sensing of each of the participants at their respective work stations, including their position, posture, gestures, audio content and optionally that persona which each individual wishes to be displayed at the animated electronic meeting place. In one embodiment, a user chooses how he represents himself on the screen through the use of a Persona or Character control. The animated electronic meeting place is provided with real time 3-D graphics renderings, showing the meeting with all of the participants including the individual participant as himself, a microphone to capture the user's speech, digital sound processing for voice localization, and position sensors to detect the participant's gestures and/or facial expressions as well as body movement. In one embodiment, the user is also provided with a view control in the form of a joy stick to zoom in or alter the perspective at which he is viewing the animated meeting. In a further embodiment, through sound localization detection as well as speech recognition circuits, stereo sound at each terminal can be steered so as to localize the sound to the person who is detected as talking.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,347,306
Filing date: 1993-12-17
Grant date: 1994-09-13
Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.
Inventor(s): NITTA; TOHEI
CPC class: H04N7/00

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