ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: September 2016

ISPR Presence News publication schedule for first week of October

ISPR Presence News publication schedule for first week of October

ISPR Presence News will not be published next week while some of us attend the 17th annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in Berlin, Germany. ISPR Presence News will return on Monday October 10.

If you’re interested in more presence-related news and fun stuff (including pictures from an AoIR panel on augmented reality), please join our open/public/free ISPR Presence Community Facebook group.

–Matthew Lombard (managing editor)… read more. “ISPR Presence News publication schedule for first week of October”

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Virtual reality takes on the videoconference

[This story from The Wall Street Journal considers the prospects for videoconferencing via virtual reality and concludes with the question of whether mass adoption would decrease or increase face-to-face meetings. See the original story for several more images and a detailed infographic. –Matthew]

Woman and man wearing VR headsets

[Image: Developers are working on virtual-reality systems that one day could replace videoconferencing as a common tool for business meetings. Photo: iStockphoto/Getty Images]

Virtual Reality Takes On the Videoconference

If meetings are held in virtual reality with avatars, will people feel more connected?

By Cat Zakrzewski
Sept. 18, 2016

Get ready for your next conference call—in virtual reality.

With equipment for virtual-reality viewing now on the consumer market, public tech companies and venture capitalists are exploring possible applications in everything from videogames to medicine. And some are betting that virtual-reality headsets could be the next big thing in business-meeting software, upending the dreaded videoconference call.… read more. “Virtual reality takes on the videoconference”

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Job: Tenure Track Position in Interactive Media and Game Development at WPI

Tenure Track Position in Interactive Media and Game Development

Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester, MA

For full consideration, applications due by December 15, 2016

The WPI Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) Program and the Computer Science Department jointly seek to hire a tenure-track faculty member to start July 1, 2017. Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science or related discipline at the time of appointment.

Established in 2005, WPI’s top-ranked IMGD program is a collaborative venture between the Computer Science, Humanities & Arts, and Social Science & Policy Studies departments, with close affiliations to the Learning Sciences and the Robotics Engineering Programs. IMGD has a robust undergraduate B.S. program that balances artistic and technical skills, with a growing graduate M.S. program in interactive media and game design. We welcome faculty candidates with expertise in any of a variety of relevant areas, such as (but not limited to): novel interface design, technical game development, mobile and networked games, virtual and augmented reality, procedural content generation, and technical animation.… read more. “Job: Tenure Track Position in Interactive Media and Game Development at WPI”

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Utility PG&E thinks VR technology may make inspecting equipment faster and safer

[Another early-days but promising application of presence-evoking technology involves putting users ‘inside’ a city’s or nation’s technology infrastructure to maintain equipment and diagnose (and hopefully repair) problems; this story is from Fortune, where the original includes a 2:23 minute video. –Matthew]

Electric outlet 'wearing' VR headset (graphic)

Virtual Reality Goes Electric

Utility PG&E thinks VR technology may make inspecting equipment faster and safer.

by Jonathan Vanian
September 28, 2016

For an electric utility, a technical glitch could trigger a huge blackout, plunging entire cities into darkness.

Typically such an event would require utility workers to scramble to a faraway substation. But what if they instead strap on virtual-reality headsets and walk through a model of the facility to troubleshoot?

Could technology once seen only in sci-fi films help a utility company save precious minutes diagnosing a critical problem?

This is the future as envisioned by California utility PG&E, which is working on virtual-reality technology with data-crunching startup Space-Time Insight.… read more. “Utility PG&E thinks VR technology may make inspecting equipment faster and safer”

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Call: Chapters for “Personal Assistants: Emerging Technologies”

Call for Chapters

Personal Assistants: Emerging Technologies

Intelligent Systems Reference Library
Springer
http://www.springer.com/series/8578

Deadline: December 15th, 2016

INTRODUCTION

It has been shown that the quality of life for people remaining in their own homes is generally better than for those who are institutionalized. Moreover, the cost for institutional care can be much higher than the cost of care for a patient at home. To balance this situation, efforts must be made to move the services and care available in institutions to the home environment. Thus, society poses new challenges, demanding systems that overcome this issue.

Personal Assistants (PA) are a relatively new concept, advancing the Cognitive Orthotics concept that is only focused on direct assistance, to people with cognitive or physical disabilities, and expanding the area to include complex platforms that include sensors, actuators, monitoring abilities and decision processes.

PA is an area containing technologies such as cognitive assistants, multi-agent systems, robotics and applications (such as e-health and e-learning), among others.… read more. “Call: Chapters for “Personal Assistants: Emerging Technologies””

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At DARPA, virtual reality is more than a toy

[Here’s an interesting perspective on the possibilities for presence-evoking technology from FedScoop. –Matthew]

VR headset (Getty Images)

At DARPA, virtual reality is more than a toy

Trung Tran, a program manager at DARPA, told an audience of virtual reality enthusiasts about the agency’s current goals, urging them to consider government partnership if they have big ideas.

By Samantha Ehlinger
September 27, 2016

For virtual reality to become more than another quick-to-fade fad like 3-D televisions or the overhyped Google Glass, it needs the type of careful nurturing that only government can give it through long-term developmental investments, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program manager told a crowd of VR enthusiasts Monday.

While many of the virtual reality applications from the commercial sector come off more like “toy games,” the government is better positioned to foster ideas that take more time to bear fruit, said DARPA’s Trung Tran.… read more. “At DARPA, virtual reality is more than a toy”

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Call: ACM DIS 2017 – Designing Interactive Systems conference

ACM DIS 2017: Call for Papers and Notes

DIS2017 Space, Place and Interface: Bridging knowledge, connecting people
ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems conference

10-14 June 2017, Edinburgh, UK
www.dis2017.org

Papers, Notes, Pictorials notice of intent due: January 9, 2017

The theme of DIS 2017 is bridging and connecting – across disciplines, practices, places and understandings. The most interesting things happen at edges and boundaries, and so the aim of the 2017 conference is to examine different approaches to framing knowledge about the design of interactive systems. As advancements in interactive technology continue to blur the demarcations between people and data, and between things and software, interaction designers and researchers are finding new ways to explore this evolving, interdisciplinary landscape. At DIS 2017 we shall consider the contrasts and commonalities that are central in shaping the landscape of emerging interaction paradigms.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

DIS 2017 centres on designerly approaches to creating, deploying and critically reflecting on interactive systems.… read more. “Call: ACM DIS 2017 – Designing Interactive Systems conference”

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What I learned from 3 months with in-home consumer VR

[This post from SAP Community Network provides a thoughtful consumer’s observations on prolonged in-home use of VR; it’ll be interesting to revisit these and others’ observations as presence technologies evolve. –Matthew]

Three months in VR graphic

3 months in Virtual Reality, what I learned so far…

Posted by Patrick Willer on Sep 5, 2016

I can vividly remember my first VR experience. It was 25 years ago!

It was early 1990s. I was a teenager addicted to video games. When I wanted more sensation than my Game Boy could provide, there was only one option: the arcade hall. My favorite happy place took my pocket money piece by piece.

I didn’t have a lot of pocket money, so I selected the game economically. The longer I played the same game the better I got and the more value I received out of a coin. Of course I noticed the attractive big double coin machines like Out Run and After Burner.… read more. “What I learned from 3 months with in-home consumer VR”

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Call: International Symposium on Evaluating Digital Cultural Resources (EDCR 2016)

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Symposium on Evaluating Digital Cultural Resources (EDCR 2016)
Glasgow, Kelvin Hall, 12-13 December 2016

Organized by the Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation

Submission deadline: Friday, 7 October 2016

SCOPE AND CONTEXT

Digital technologies are affecting all aspects of our lives, reshaping the way we communicate, learn, and approach the world around us. In the case of cultural institutions, digital applications are used in all key areas of operation, from documenting, interpreting and exhibiting the collections to communicating with diverse audience groups. The communication of collections information in digital form, whether an online catalogue, mobile application, museum interactive or social media exchange, increasingly affects our cultural encounters and shapes our perception of cultural organisations. Although cultural and higher education institutions around the world are heavily investing on digitisation and working to make their collections available online, we still know very little about who uses digital collections, how they interact with the associated data, and what the impacts of these digital resources are.… read more. “Call: International Symposium on Evaluating Digital Cultural Resources (EDCR 2016)”

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Preserving experience: The virtual Holocaust survivor

[This story from The Guardian highlights one of, if not the, most important applications of presence-evoking technology, the preservation of individual and cultural history. The original version includes an additional image and a 0:51 minute video; also see “Holocaust Survivor Experiences Her Own Rescue in Virtual Reality“ (which includes a video) in TIME. –Matthew]

Hologram of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter

The virtual Holocaust survivor: How history gained new dimensions

Pinchas Gutter survived a Nazi death camp – and now his story will live on through a hologram that can answer your questions

Thomas McMullan
18 June 2016

Pinchas Gutter goes out of his way to find me biscuits. In a sun-baked living room in his north London home, he opens a packet of Rich Tea, sits down and tells me about the Holocaust.

Gutter was seven years old when the second world war broke out.… read more. “Preserving experience: The virtual Holocaust survivor”

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