International Society
for Presence Research

Month: April 2017

  • Call: Academic MindTrek Conference 2017

    Published:

    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…

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

    Published:

    [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…

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

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

    Published:

    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 /…

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

  • Lyrebird is a voice mimic for the fake news era

    Published:

    [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…

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

    Published:

    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.…

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  • VR and presence at the gym

    Published:

    [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…

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  • Call: Cyborg Classics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

    Published:

    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,…

    Read more: Call: Cyborg Classics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

  • Using VR to help prevent falls in the elderly and others

    Published:

    [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…

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

    Published:

    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…

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

  • How VR and presence are reinventing Holocaust remembrance

    Published:

    [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…

    Read more: How VR and presence are reinventing Holocaust remembrance

  • Call: Humans, the Enhanced, and Machines in Law – Science in Public 2017 sessions

    Published:

      Call for Papers Humans, the Enhanced, and Machines in Law Part of Science in Public 2017 University of Sheffield July 10-12 Extended deadline: April 25 Science and technology are essential ingredients of our humanity. The emergence of fruitful and diverse scholarly perspectives on the history, practice, communication, governance and impacts of scientific knowledge reflects this fact. Yet rapid scientific and technological change has also unsettled the idea of what it means to be human; for example, through new frontiers in physical and cognitive enhancement, shift to knowledge economies, and potential threats to employment from mass automation. These changes take…

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  • How Facebook is taking mind reading from sci-fi to reality

    Published:

    [There’s plenty of press coverage of events and announcements at this week’s F8 Facebook Developer Conference (see Wired on Facebook Spaces VR, The New York Times on AR, and The Guardian for 8 takeaways from the conference), but less attention has been given to the company’s work on brain-computer interfaces. This story is from The Verge, where it includes more images and a 0:15 minute video. –Matthew] How Facebook is taking mind reading from sci-fi to reality Regina Dugan: ‘This isn’t cocktail party talk.’ by Nick Statt Apr 20, 2017 The rumblings started months ago. Through a series of peculiar job…

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