Models for Decision Making in Video Mediated Communication

There is an abundance of players in the domain of video communication, offering systems for various purposes and different capabilities. However, these systems are still very limited in adapting the visual presentation of the remote participants to the participants' needs. In this paper we describe the components, the implementation and the overall behaviour of an automatic decision-making system for video communication, known as Orchestration Engine. This system analyses the communication behaviour of the participants and applies TV-like mixing grammars adapt the user interface accordingly. The behaviour is implemented as a set of rules, divided into different levels and fulfilling aesthetic and pragmatic requirements. This rule set is
 defined declaratively, facilitating the adjustments/modifications in desired behaviour, while proving fast enough for real-time decision making.