[This short story from Science Magazine reports on a new use of VR for human-robot swarm interaction; see the original version for a 1:30 minute video, follow the link in the story to read the abstract and full paper in arXiv, and watch a 3:54 minute video via YouTube. –Matthew]

Ever dream of controlling robot swarms? This new virtual reality headset could help

By Edd Gent
March 29, 2019

Robot swarms could revolutionize everything from search and rescue missions to mining, but figuring out how to oversee so many moving parts is tough. A new approach lets people control tiny, semiautonomous robots using virtual reality (VR)—much like a child might herd a swarm of crawling ants.

After donning VR goggles, the operator hovers above a virtual arena containing up to nine robots that can independently navigate and coordinate with each other.… read more. “New tech lets user be omnipotent virtual giant to control robot swarms”

[As with most stories about presence and sexuality, this one from VentureBeat raises a variety of psychological, sociological, technological and ethical issues. See the original version for a second image, and Vimeo for a 0:21 minute video. Note the related developments mentioned in the last paragraph; for more about Cardi-Bot see CamSoda’s website and coverage in The Next Web; and for more on VIRP, see CamSoda and The Verge. For an unusual story about inverse presence related to sexuality see a separate new story in Yahoo! Entertainment. –Matthew]

CamSoda’s Camoji lets cam models hide behind animated avatars

Dean Takahashi
March 27, 2019

Webcam models can make a lot of money, but sometimes they don’t want to be caught doing risqué things on the internet for fear of being found out by family, employers, or friends. So adult webcam platform CamSoda is launching Camoji, or digital animated avatars that the models can hide behind.… read more. “CamSoda’s Camoji lets cam models hide behind animated avatars”