ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: April 2017

Call: Academic MindTrek Conference 2017

Call for Papers, Posters, Demos & Workshops

Academic MindTrek Conference 2017
September 20-21
Tampere, Finland
Full details: http://www.mindtrek.org/2017/academic/

IMPORTANT DATES

  • Call for Papers submission deadline May 21st
  • Acceptance/Rejection notification: July 14th
  • Copyright forms: August 14th
  • Conference registration/Camera-ready papers: August 21st

Academic Mindtrek is…

  • A meeting place where researchers, experts and thinkers can present results from their latest work in the conference thematic areas.
  • Special academic sessions (e.g. demonstrations, workshops and multidisciplinary sessions) held parallel to the Mindtrek conference.
  • A real chance for media enthusiasts to think outside the box.
  • Keynote speakers announced later.

We are pleased to invite you to the 21st International Academic Mindtrek conference, 20th to 21st September 2017. Academic Mindtrek is a meeting place where researchers, experts and thinkers present results from their latest work regarding the development of novel technology, media and digital culture for the society of tomorrow.… read more. “Call: Academic MindTrek Conference 2017”

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MindMaze’s neural VR interface reads your mind to reflect your facial expression

[The VR add-on described in this story from Seeker should enhance presence – note the last short paragraph, in which the MindMaze creator and CEO says “We’re moving away from VR as a technological experience to being a real human experience…” The original story includes other images and a video. See coverage of Google’s related tech in an ISPR Presence News post from a few months ago. –Matthew]

MindMaze’s Neural VR Interface Reads Your Mind to Reflect Your Facial Expression

MASK, a new brain-computer product for desktop and mobile virtual reality headsets, can predict a smile or a wink milliseconds before you even move.

By Dave Roos
April 13, 2017

If Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reading his crystal ball correctly, then the next big thing will be social virtual reality. In the very near future, you’ll put on a virtual reality headset and meet up with friends for virtual hangouts, live concerts, and interactive games.… read more. “MindMaze’s neural VR interface reads your mind to reflect your facial expression”

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Call: Virtual Agents for Social Skills Training (VASST) – Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces special issue

CALL FOR PAPERS

Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces
Special Issue: Virtual Agents for Social Skills Training (VASST)

Guest Editors:
Merijn Bruijnes, University of Twente
m.bruijnes@utwente.nl
Jeroen Linssen, University of Twente
j.m.linssen@utwente.nl
Dirk Heylen, University of Twente
d.k.j.heylen@utwente.nl

Paper submission deadline: 30th October 2017

Interactive technology, such as virtual agents, to train social skills can improve training curricula. For example police officers can train for interviewing suspects or detecting deception with a virtual agent. Other examples of application areas include (but are not limited to) social workers (training for dealing with broken homes), psychiatrists (training for interviewing people with various difficulties / vulnerabilities / personalities), training of social skills such as job interviews, or social stress management.

We invite all researchers who investigate the design, implementation, and evaluation of technology to submit their work to this special issue on Virtual Agents for Social Skills Training (VASST).… read more. “Call: Virtual Agents for Social Skills Training (VASST) – Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces special issue”

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Lyrebird is a voice mimic for the fake news era

[The evolution of presence-evoking technology will increasingly make it harder to distinguish the ‘real’ from the artificial, with both positive and negative consequences. This story is from TechCrunch, where it includes a video of the (real) Lyre bird in action. –Matthew]

[Image: Source: TechSpot]

Lyrebird is a voice mimic for the fake news era

Posted April 26, 2017 by Natasha Lomas

A Montreal-based AI startup called Lyrebird has taken the wraps off a voice imitation algorithm that the team says can not only mimic the speech of a real person but shift its emotional cadence — and do all this with just a tiny snippet of real world audio.

The public demo, released online yesterday, consists of a series audio samples of (fake) speech generated using their algorithm and one minute voice samples of the speakers. They’ve used voice samples from Presidents Trump, Obama and Hillary Clinton to demo the tech in action — and for maximum FAKE NEWS impact, obviously.… read more. “Lyrebird is a voice mimic for the fake news era”

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Call: 23rd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2017)

Call for Papers, Posters, and Demos

VRST 2017: 23rd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology
Gothenburg, Sweden, November 08-10
https://vrst.acm.org/vrst2017/

First submission deadline:  June 30, 2017

The 23rd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2017) is an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge among researchers, developers, and industry concerned with virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) software and technology. VRST provides an opportunity for VR/AR researchers to interact, share new results, show live demonstrations of their work, and discuss emerging directions for the field. The event is sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGGRAPH.

We invite original, high-quality research papers in all areas of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, as well as 3D interaction. Research papers should describe results that contribute to advancements in the following areas:

  • 3D interaction for VR/AR
  • VR/AR systems and toolkits
  • Immersive projection technologies and other advanced display technologies
  • Presence, cognition, and embodiment in VR/AR/MR
  • Haptics, audio, and other non-visual modalities
  • User studies and evaluation
  • Multi-user and distributed VR, tele-immersion and tele-presence
  • Serious games and edutainment using VR/AR/MR
  • Novel devices (both input and output) for VR, AR, MR, and haptics
  • Applications of VR/AR/MR

Submissions in related areas are welcome too.… read more. “Call: 23rd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2017)”

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VR and presence at the gym

[Can presence provide the motivation and distraction for long-term physical fitness? This story from Bloomberg examines some of the issues (and includes two more images). –Matthew]

Virtual Reality Hits the Gym

  • Icaros lets exercisers feel like they’re flying or diving
  • Skeptics say gimmicks won’t trick brain into making body work

by Yuji Nakamura
April 26, 2017

Johannes Scholl is betting virtual reality can keep people excited about working out.

Scholl’s startup, Munich-based Icaros GmbH, has developed a VR exercise machine that delivers a core workout by making it seem like users are flying and deep-ocean diving. About 200 gyms and entertainment centers from London to Tokyo have installed the machines, which cost about $10,000 after including shipping and other costs.  A cheaper home version for about $2,000 is under development and could be unveiled around the start of next year.… read more. “VR and presence at the gym”

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Call: Cyborg Classics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Call for Abstracts

Cyborg Classics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium
University of Bristol, UK
Friday July 7, 2017

Submission deadline: May 31, 2017

We are pleased to announce a one-day symposium, sponsored by BIRTHA (The Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts) to be held at the University of Bristol, on Friday July 7, 2017.

Keynote speakers:
Dr Kate Devlin (Goldsmiths)
Dr Genevieve Liveley (Bristol)
Dr Rae Muhlstock (NYU)

The aim of the day is to bring together researchers from different disciplines – scholars in Archaeology & Anthropology, Classics, English, History, and Theology as well as in AI, Robotics, Ethics, and Medicine – to share their work on automata, robots, and cyborgs. Ultimately, the aim is an edited volume and the development of further collaborative research projects.

Indicative key provocations include:

  • To what extent do myths and narratives about automata, robots, and cyborgs raise questions that are relevant to contemporary debates concerning robot, cyborg, and AI product innovation?
read more. “Call: Cyborg Classics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium”
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Using VR to help prevent falls in the elderly and others

[Telepresence via VR is being used to better understand and prevent balance impairments that become more likely as we age; this story is from the UNC Healthcare and UNC Newsroom; the study is available from Nature Scientific Reports.  –Matthew]

[Image: Applied Biomechanics Laboratory at UNC (Courtesy of the UNC/NC State Department of Biomedical Engineering)]

Can virtual reality help us prevent falls in the elderly and others?

For the elderly and people with neurodegenerative conditions, balance is not taken for granted. UNC and NC State biomedical engineers are using a new virtual reality system that might one day be used to reveal balance impairments currently undetectable during conventional testing or normal walking.

April 20, 2017

Media Contact: Mark Derewicz, 919-974-1915, mark.derewicz@unchealth.unc.edu

CHAPEL HILL, NC – Every year, falls lead to hospitalization or death for hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans.… read more. “Using VR to help prevent falls in the elderly and others”

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Call: Automotive HMI: Vehicles in the Transition from Manual to Automated Driving (at People and Computers 2017)

Call for Papers

6th Workshop Automotive HMI:
Vehicles in the Transition from Manual to Automated Driving
colocated with People and Computers (MuC) 2017 (http://muc2017.mensch-und-computer.de/)
September 10-13, 2017 | Regensburg
http://ws-automotive-hmi.human-machine-interaction.de

Submission deadline: June 12, 2017

[via Google Translate:
People and Computers 2017 website in English
Automotive HMI workshop website in English
–ML]

Automotive user interfaces and especially automated vehicle technology pose a plenty of challenges to researchers, vehicle manufacturers, and third-party suppliers to support all diverse facets of user needs. To give an example, they emerge from the variation of different user groups ranging from inexperienced, thrill-seeking young novice drivers to elderly drivers with all their natural limitations. To allow assessing the quality of automotive user interfaces and automated driving technology already during development and within virtual test processes, the proposed workshop is dedicated to the quest of finding objective and quantifiable quality criteria for describing future driving experiences.… read more. “Call: Automotive HMI: Vehicles in the Transition from Manual to Automated Driving (at People and Computers 2017)”

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How VR and presence are reinventing Holocaust remembrance

[This story from Haaretz discusses design decisions and the power and ethics of presence experiences across media in the most serious of contexts. The original version includes more images and a 0:51 minute video. –Matthew]

How Virtual Reality Is Reinventing Holocaust Remembrance

In ‘The Last Goodbye’ at the Tribeca Virtual Arcade this month, the viewer wears a virtual-reality headset as a survivor recounts his ordeal at Majdanek. It’s an experience more authentic than ‘Shoah,’ its producer says

Neta Alexander (New York) Apr 24, 2017

NEW YORK − When asked a question, Pinchas Gutter doesn’t simply provide an answer − the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor tells a story.

In an interview Saturday during a lunch in his honor at the Tribeca Film Festival, Gutter recalled how he barely survived five concentration camps and a death march from Germany to Czechoslovakia. In the early ‘50s, the Jewish orphan who lost his family at Majdanek decided to volunteer for the Israeli army.… read more. “How VR and presence are reinventing Holocaust remembrance”

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