International Society
for Presence Research

Month: March 2021

  • Call: Inclusive Human-Robot Interaction – Special Session at RO-MAN 2021

    Published:

    Call for Papers Inclusive HRI – Special Session at RO-MAN 2021 August 8-12, 2021 – Virtual Website: https://ro-man2021.org/full-papers/ IMPORTANT DATES Paper Submission: March 21, 2021 (regular paper submission deadline) Notification of acceptance: May 25, 2021 Camera ready papers due: June 20, 2021 Conference: August 8-12, 2021 OVERVIEW How can we improve robots’ capacity to interact successfully with all segments of the population? How can we prevent the implicit transfer of our bias into robots while designing interactions and related artificial intelligence software? Interactive robots are being deployed into homes, schools, shopping malls, hospitals, and retirement homes worldwide. Many of these…

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  • Space Force is using VR to train its Guardians to work on satellites

    Published:

    [The U.S. Military’s Space Force branch is using presence-evoking technology to train for satellite missions, as reported in this story from The Washington Post; for more information see a December 2020 story in National Defense magazine. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: SAIC] Space Force is using virtual-reality headsets to train its Guardians to work on satellites The newest branch of the military uses virtual reality software to simulate national security scenarios By Dalvin Brown March 12, 2021 The U.S. Space Force is using virtual reality headsets to launch satellite mission operators into places they’ve never been before. The military branch, started under…

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  • Call: ICMI 2021, the 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction

    Published:

    Call for Long, Short and Blue Sky Papers 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ACM ICMI 2021) 18-22 October 2021 Montreal, Canada http://icmi.acm.org/2021/index.php?id=cfp Submission deadline: May 26, 2021 The 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ACM ICMI 2021) will be held in Montreal, Canada. ACM ICMI is the premier international forum for multidisciplinary research on multimodal human-human and human-computer interaction, interfaces, and system development. The conference focuses on theoretical and empirical foundations, component technologies, and combined multimodal processing techniques that define the field of multimodal interaction analysis, interface design, and system development. We are keen to showcase novel…

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  • Multiple meanings: How a virtual ‘Happy Days’ conveys presence

    Published:

    [This interesting and timely first-person report by actress Tessa Albertson in American Theater touches, sometimes indirectly, on several related meanings of presence, illustrating both the richness and some of the challenges of studying the concept. See the original story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: ‘Happy Days,’ presented by New York’s wild project and the Princeton University Fund for Irish Studies.] Winnie for the Win: How a Virtual ‘Happy Days’ Conveys Presence Beckett’s play about a woman living moment to moment in a pile of dirt is a natural fit, and a great lesson, for our pandemic isolation. By Tessa…

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  • Call: “Embodied, Embedded – A Talk about Theatre and AI” online lecture and debate

    Published:

    Call for Registration Online Lecture and Debate Embodied, Embedded – A Talk about Theatre and AI Evening Lecture by Diana Serbanescu Wednesday March 24, 2021 at 7 pm (CET) Organized by the Working Group on Philosophy of Technology (WGPT) – https://hiw.kuleuven.be/wgpt Register by: March 23, 2021 Based on Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory, Haraway’s feminist theory and REPLICA’s practice-led research project on The Shape of Things to Come, this talk discusses the potential of applied theatre for empowering communities to explore and devise embodied interactions with intelligent systems, thus becoming the co-designers of these technologies. Not…

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  • Inside Facebook Reality Labs: The Next Era of Human-Computer Interaction

    Published:

    [The beginning of a Fox Business story excerpted below quotes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talking about presence and refers to a new Tech@Facebook blog post (also below) that outlines the company’s efforts and plans to develop AI- and AR-based presence-evoking technologies. See the original post for two more images and two videos and for related new stories see: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks smart glasses could help combat climate change (CNBC) Mark Zuckerberg says realistic avatars are Facebook’s next big VR bet (The Verge) Facebook is considering a creepy new feature for its smart glasses (BGR) –Matthew] Facebook reveals more details…

    Read more: Inside Facebook Reality Labs: The Next Era of Human-Computer Interaction

  • Call: Disability and Video Games: Practices of En-/Disabling Modes of Digital Gaming (Edited Book)

    Published:

    Call for Papers: Disability and Video Games: Practices of En-/Disabling Modes of Digital Gaming (Edited Book) Beate Ochsner & Markus Spöhrer (University of Konstanz, Germany) Deadline for Abstracts: 15.04.2021 (300 words) Deadline for papers: 15.09.2021 Please submit your abstracts: markus.spoehrer@uni-konstanz.de Concerns with the accessibility and adaptability of digital games, corresponding gaming platforms as well as peripheral devices have been uttered from different perspectives and sources during the last decades. Interestingly, subcultural or amateur DIY-accessibility practices have been documented since the mid-1970s. Counterplaying the arcade game Touch Me (Atari 1974) as a game for blind persons (cf. Kirke, 2018, p. 66;…

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  • Morehouse College launches virtual reality campus and classes

    Published:

    [Morehouse College, with help from Qualcomm and VictoryXR, is offering two courses on an immersive virtual reality version of its Atlanta, Georgia campus, as reported in this story from Auganix. The original story includes a second image and a short video example (also available with others via YouTube) and there’s more information in coverage by The Muscatine Journal (a first-person report) and Forbes, as well as the VictoryXR website. –Matthew] [Image: Some of the Morehouse College Professors in VR. Credit: Morehouse College / Qualcomm / VictoryXR] Morehouse College launches Virtual Reality campus and classes in collaboration with VictoryXR and Qualcomm…

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  • Call: Al: Limitations, Foundations, and New Directions – 24th CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

    Published:

    Call for Abstracts 24th Annual CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference Artificial Intelligence: Limitations, Foundations, and New Directions Saturday, April 24, 2021 Online https://philevents.org/event/show/88190 Submission deadline: March 19, 2021 We welcome abstracts from graduate students on any topic related to artificial intelligence, broadly construed. The conference will be held virtually on Saturday, April 24. Keynote Speakers: Jesse Prinz (CUNY), TBA Contemporary research in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is proving dramatically successful where earlier projects stalled. Image models and language models today display sophisticated (and sometimes uncanny) abilities in some narrow domains. Various flavors of machine learning see applications in many…

    Read more: Call: Al: Limitations, Foundations, and New Directions – 24th CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

  • Teaching empathy with VR and presence

    Published:

    [This story from Inc. about how one company is using avatars controlled in real time by actors to develop people’s empathy captures the essence of presence with this description: “like a good theater performance, the simulations have enough emotional realism to allow for a suspension of disbelief…  Participants react as they would in real life, even though they know the situation is artificial.” –Matthew] Learning Empathy Takes Practice. Lots of It. That’s Where Virtual Reality Can Help Mursion’s simulations use real actors in A.I.-generated scenarios–no bulky headset required. It could be the future of workplace learning. By Sophie Downes February…

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  • Call: Changing Values, Changing Technologies International Research Conference

    Published:

    Call for Abstracts Changing Values, Changing Technologies International Research Conference Delft University of Technology [see note below] 12 & 13 October 2021 Deadline for abstract submission: May 15 2021 NOTE: We are currently planning to have the conference in Delft. If the situation will change due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will update our plans accordingly. ORGANIZERS Ibo van de Poel, Anna Melnyk, Steffen Steinert, and Michael Klenk (Delft University of Technology) AIMS The aim of the conference is to present and discuss research on the interrelations of values and technology. Specifically, we aim to explore how novel technological developments…

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  • Presence evolution: The links between linear perspective and VR technology

    Published:

    [This piece from Hyperallergic provides a centuries-long view of the evolution of presence experiences from the development of linear perspective to represent three dimensions to today’s virtual reality headsets that “trap [the user] in a very well-designed sensorial cage.” How will presence experiences evolve over the next several centuries? See the original story for five more images. –Matthew] [Image: Thomas Eakins, “Perspective Study Of Boy Viewing Object” (1910). Credit: Wikiart] The Links Between Linear Perspective and Virtual Reality Technology It may surprise the reader to find that one of the founding moments for the development of virtual reality actually happened…

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