ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: July 2012

Job: Postoc position at Bielefeld University on EU funded project “The Hand Embodied”

A 1.5 year postdoc position is available in the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bielefeld University, Germany (http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/biologie/cns/) to work with Prof. Marc Ernst on the EU funded Project “The Hand Embodied – THE” (http://www.thehandembodied.eu/).

In this project a highly interdisciplinary team of 10 European Universities covering fields from perception, neuroscience, engineering and robotics work together with the ultimate goal to understand and learn from the highly sophisticated human dexterous abilities. In our group we are focussing on questions related to human multisensory perception necessary for interacting with the environment and for manipulating objects.… read more. “Job: Postoc position at Bielefeld University on EU funded project “The Hand Embodied””

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Pittsburgh specialists mentor international surgeons remotely

[From FierceHealthIT]

[Image: From Telementoring and Telesurgery: Future or Fiction? by da Silva, McGregor, Rayman and Luke (2010).]

Pittsburgh specialists mentor international surgeons remotely

Telepresence technology allows them to walk colleagues through new procedures

July 30, 2012 | By Susan D. Hall

A University of Pittsburgh Medical Center uses telepresence technology to provide live support for surgeons in other countries who have difficulty replicating complex new procedures.

Since 2005, its cranial base surgical team of three neurosurgeons and two otolaryngologists have trained more than 500 surgeons from more than 30 countries on treatment tumors and other conditions affecting the base of skull, nasal, and sinus areas, and some areas of the brain.

About 60 percent of those who come for a four-day course are international physicians, but once back home they often send emails seeking help, Carl Snyderman, M.D.,… read more. “Pittsburgh specialists mentor international surgeons remotely”

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Call: Videogames 2012

Videogames 2012
5th Annual Conference in Science and Art of Videogames
Game, Play, and Society

13, 14 and 15 December, Catholic University of Portugal – Lisbon

Videogames 2012 – Annual Conference in Science and Art of Videogames will be organized by the research line “Media, Technology, Contexts” of the Research Center for Communication and Culture (CECC), at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Catholic University of Portugal, and the Portuguese Society of Videogame Sciences (SPCV).The SPCV conferences take place annually and have come to constitute significant venues to promote research as well as debate and foster the videogames industry. The conference hosts researchers and professionals in this area, and aims at promoting the dissemination of work in the field and facilitating exchanging experience between the academic community and the industry. This 5th conference seeks to assert itself as a multidisciplinary event, looking for contributions from several scientific areas including art, game design and narrative, computational aspects, as well as videogames theoretical and critical analysis regarding practices and applications that encompass the market and the industry.… read more. “Call: Videogames 2012”

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Extending body space: Long virtual arms perceived as part of users’ body

[From The University of Barcelona]

Using virtual reality an arm up to three or even four times the length of a real arm can be felt as if it was the person’s own arm

July 20, 2012
Recerca

A study shows that using virtual reality an arm up to three or possibly even four times the length of a person’s real arm can be felt as if it was the person’s own arm, even if it incorporates strong asymmetries in the body shape.

It is explained in the article “Extending body space in immersive virtual reality: a very long arm illusion”, published in the journal PLoS ONE and signed by researchers Mel Slater, Konstantina Kilteni and Jean-Marie Normand, from the Event Lab at the Faculty of Psychology of the UB and from the Catalan Institution for Research Advanced Studies (ICREA), together with Maria V.… read more. “Extending body space: Long virtual arms perceived as part of users’ body”

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Call: Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group panels at SCMS Chicago 2013

Here are the five prospective pre-constituted panels looking for participants from the Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group (VGSSIG) of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies (SCMS) for the Chicago 2013 SCMS conference.

Please note that deadlines and requirements for submissions vary from panel to panel; please contact the panel convener directly if you have questions. Best of luck to all!

Sincerely,

Jessica Aldred jessica.aldred@gmail.com
Daniel Reynolds dreynolds@umail.ucsb.edu
VGSSIG co-chairs

Felan Parker felan.parker@hotmail.com
VGSSIG graduate student representativeread more. “Call: Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group panels at SCMS Chicago 2013”

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Trying out Canon’s mixed-reality tech

[From IEEE Spectrum; for more information, see Canon’s press release]

[Image: Reality Mixed: The author checks out a computer generated car through Canon’s mixed reality system. Photo: John Boyd]

Trying Out Canon’s Mixed-Reality Tech

Meant for design work, it goes well beyond consumer-oriented augmented reality

By John Boyd

26 July 2012—Canon begins selling a next-generation form of virtual reality technology known as mixed reality (MR) this month. The company suggests its version of MR is an enhanced, more grown-up version of the augmented reality provided by some smartphone apps and things like Google’s Project Glass. In contrast to augmented reality, which typically adds text or simple graphics to what the user sees, Canon’s MR adds computer-generated virtual objects to the real world in real time, at full scale, and in three dimensions.

In a further contrast to consumer-oriented augmented-reality schemes, the technology is initially targeted at engineering groups involved in designing and building new products.… read more. “Trying out Canon’s mixed-reality tech”

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Call: JVWR Augmented Reality Workshop at ICIS2012

Call for Participants, Ideas, and Sponsors

Augmented Reality AT ICIS2012
A Special Face-2-Face Workshop

December 16, 2012 08:30-12:00
at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2012)
to be held in Orlando Florida, USA from December 16-19, 2012

ICIS (http://icis2012.aisnet.org/) is the major annual international meeting of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), which has over 4,000 members representing universities in over 95 countries worldwide. It is the most prestigious gathering of academics and practitioners in the IS discipline, and provides a forum for networking and sharing of latest ideas and highest caliber scientific work among the IS professions. Each year, over 1,000 IS academic professions from around the world participate in the conference program, which includes about 60 sessions and 180 presentations, in addition to keynotes, CIO panels, and research panels.

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (http://jvwresearch.orgread more. “Call: JVWR Augmented Reality Workshop at ICIS2012”

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Virtual shoe stores use augmented reality to find your perfect footwear

[From DesignTAXI, where the story includes additional images and a 1:26 minute video]

Virtual Shoe Stores Use Augmented Reality To Find Your Perfect Footwear

25 Jul 2012

To reach out to more consumers, German shoe retailer, Goertz, has gone virtual with their augmented reality ‘pop-up’ shoe stores.

They installed virtual stores at crowded public places such as train stations and invited customers to ‘try on’ a pair of shoes.

Using three Microsoft Kinect cameras and a large screen, they would scan and render 3D shoes onto the customer’s feet—allowing customers to see the shoes like they were actually wearing them.

Customers could try on different models of shoes in different sizes before making a purchase through their smart phones via a QR code that will be displayed on the screen.

Could this be the shoe stores of the future?… read more. “Virtual shoe stores use augmented reality to find your perfect footwear”

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Call: Antennae: The Virtual Animal

Call for Papers:
Antennae: The Virtual Animal

www.antennae.org.uk

In his influential essay from 1977 titled ‘Why Look at Animals?’ John Berger advanced the thesis that human relationships with animals are predominantly shaped by representation. The essay argued that the increase of animal representation, which began at the end of the nineteenth century, constituted a phenomenon directly linked to the increasing disappearance of live animals in our everyday lives. Today animals have conspicuously emerged in video games and alternative reality scenarios, posing pressing questions about representation and interaction at a time when the virtual world seems to be on the brink of overshadowing the material one. This issue of Antennae will gather a range of perspectives in the attempt of mapping the current state of affairs with the ‘virtual animal’.… read more. “Call: Antennae: The Virtual Animal”

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Apple granted patent for high-concept input techniques

[From Wired;  more information is available at Patently Apple]

[Image: An illustration showing a combined system using target tracking and a touchscreen. Image: Free Patents Online.]

Apple Granted Patent for High-Concept Input Techniques

By Christina Bonnington
July 24, 2012

Apple was granted a sweeping, multipronged patent today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office — but you may need a degree in theoretical physics to divine exactly which technologies the patent is protecting. The patent, “Method for providing human input to a computer,” addresses both new and existing ways we interact with touchscreen devices, and covers everything from computer interfaces, to Kinect-style gaming and virtual-reality gloves, to touch input for vehicles.… read more. “Apple granted patent for high-concept input techniques”

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