ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: May 2023

Call: Designing Conversational User Interfaces for Older Adults – CUI 2023 Workshop

Call for Submissions and for Participation

Designing Conversational User Interfaces for Older Adults
A Workshop on Theoretical, Methodological, and Practical Design Perspectives on Designing CUIs for Older Adults

At the ACM Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) 2023 conference
July 19, 2023
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Workshop:  http://speech-interaction.org/CUI-OA2023
CUI 2023: https://www.conversationaluserinterfaces.org/2023/

Submission deadline: Submitted papers will be lightly reviewed by the organizing committee within 10 days of submission (there is no formal deadline)

This multidisciplinary workshop aims to tackle the significant gaps in theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and exploration of new paradigms within the research and design of Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) for Older Adults (OAs). We also aim to build research capacity by bringing together researchers and practitioners across several disciplines and industries who are actively working or having an interest toward understanding older adults’ use of and need for CUIs.

We invite researchers from various fields to present their work on and collectively engage in synthesizing and collating findings from different disciplines, and to discuss barriers and approaches to designing CUIs that are usable, adoptable, personally, and culturally relevant to OAs.… read more. “Call: Designing Conversational User Interfaces for Older Adults – CUI 2023 Workshop”

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Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA) is first large-scale system to improve XR human-subject research

[A multi-campus, cross-disciplinary, NSF-funded project is designed to make it easier for researchers to conduct studies of extended reality (XR) experiences and impacts using larger and more diverse sets of participants, as reported in this story from the University of Central Florida. See also a related press release from Lehigh University via Eurekalert! that links to a story about Lehigh Professor Valerie Jones Taylor’s “own research focused on the potential of VR to improve encounters between members of different races.” –Matthew]

UCF Leads Development of First Large-scale System for Extended Reality Research

The nearly $5 million project will facilitate human subjects research to improve extended reality technologies for the general population and make them more inclusive to groups such as older adults or people with disabilities.

By Robert Wells
April 25, 2023

A University of Central Florida researcher is leading a nearly $5 million U.S.… read more. “Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA) is first large-scale system to improve XR human-subject research”

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Job: Extended Reality (XR) Solutions Developer (KTP Associate) at Edge Hill university

Call for Applications

Extended Reality (XR) Solutions Developer (KTP Associate)
Computer Science
Edge Hill University
Ormskirk, West Lancashire, England

Salary: £33,348 to £36,333 per annum,  Fixed Term for 32 months
Post Type: Full Time
Reference: EHA2421-0323-R
https://jobs.edgehill.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=EHA2421-0323-R

Application deadline: June 4, 2023

ABOUT THE ROLE

This role offers an exciting opportunity to lead a trail-blazing extended reality (XR) project in collaboration with the University and our industry company partner, Gener8, on the development of Gener8 Spaces’ new Gener8 XR (G8XR) product. The post will allow a successful candidate to work in a cutting-edge area while driving Gener8’s strategic aim to improve educational attainment through immersive and touch technology.

We are looking for a creative and innovative thinker who will gain experience in both industrial requirements and work environments and firsthand knowledge on how an application can be developed, tested, and delivered.… read more. “Job: Extended Reality (XR) Solutions Developer (KTP Associate) at Edge Hill university”

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The other DWI: Driving while immersed

[In this essay for TechCrunch, virtual reality expert Jeremy Beilenson argues that virtual reality and other immersive media experiences are dangerously engaging and distracting and therefore do not belong in automobiles. –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: 5m3photos / Getty Images]

The other DWI: Driving while immersed

VR headsets have no place in moving automobiles

By Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and author of “Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do.”
May 23, 2023

On May 17, Meta and BMW released a video hailing a joint research breakthrough that will allow virtual reality headsets to work in moving cars.

Because the companies have figured out how to track a person’s body movement independently of the car’s motion, passengers and drivers will be able to wear VR headsets to simultaneously see the road and digital content or be totally immersed in a virtual world.… read more. “The other DWI: Driving while immersed”

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Call: ETHICOMP 2024 – 21st Intl. Conference on the Ethical and Social Impacts of ICT

Call for Papers

ETHICOMP 2024
21st International Conference on the Ethical and Social Impacts of ICT
Smart Ethics: The Leading Role of Ethics in the Digital World
Logroño, Spain
March 13-15, 2024.
https://www.unirioja.es/ethicomp/2024/index.html

Extended abstract submission due: June 15, 2023

We are living in a smart world, where everything looks smart. The use of the term “smart” is a buzzword. Technology becomes the backbone of virtually every aspect of our life: work, relations, health, education, leisure, … In our next international conference, ETHICOMP 2024, we wonder if the current state of technological revolution is truly smart. What does “smart” really mean in digital contexts, and what should “smart” signify? If technology becomes smart, what is the impact on computer ethics and digital ethics? It is unquestionable that any smart technology must be ethical in both its development and its uses, but cases of unethical practices in the digital world, which are often hidden by technological determinism, are increasing.… read more. “Call: ETHICOMP 2024 – 21st Intl. Conference on the Ethical and Social Impacts of ICT”

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Presence and music: ‘New’ music from The Beatles and others via AI

[Much of the coverage of the increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence to generate music is about the complex legal and ethical issues involved (e.g., see Holland & Knight and Rolling Stone). But as the story below from Interesting Engineering notes, the fact that this music is generated by AI is “often not discernible to a follower or a fan,” which represents an important form of presence (a misperception of the role of technology in a mediated experience). An earlier story from Interesting Engineering titled “Scammer sells AI-generated Frank Ocean’s songs, makes thousands of dollars,” begins with this:

“We’ve definitely opened Pandora’s box when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). What we’re witnessing in AI is the biggest shift in technology since the internet itself. For the musically inclined, this means we now live in a world where it’s hard to differentiate between a real artist’s voice and an AI-generated one, which is exactly what happened recently to Frank Ocean’s fans.… read more. “Presence and music: ‘New’ music from The Beatles and others via AI”

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Call: “AI Aesthetics” issue of SEMEIOSIS

CALL FOR ARTICLES

Journal SEMEIOSIS – Special Issue on “AI Aesthetics”
https://semeiosis.com.br/special-issue

About the Journal: https://semeiosis.com.br/about-semeiosis

Guest Editors:
Alexander Gerner (amgerner@fc.ul.pt)
Renata Souza (renatynhass@usp.com)
Vinícius de Aguiar (vjdaguiar@fc.ul.pt)

Submission deadline: June 15, 2023

“For it is evident that it is in esthetics that we ought to seek for the deepest characteristics of normative science, since esthetics, in dealing with the very ideal itself whose mere materialization thickens the attention of practices and of logic, must contain the heart, soul, and spirit of normative science.”  Peirce (1906, CP 5551).

The question of the mere ontological (im-)possibility of “the” creative machine does usually obfuscate the performative and cultural changes emerging from collaborative human-AI aesthetics. Human-machine interaction, such as in multimodal language models and text-generators (eg GPT-3; OPEN AI Codex), NFT art generators, music/audio generators put forward questions of control of randomness, sampling creativity parameters, and computational models of aesthetic judgments.… read more. “Call: “AI Aesthetics” issue of SEMEIOSIS”

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First-person report: Spacetop, the first augmented reality laptop

[This first-person report from Popular Mechanics describes a new laptop computer that has a large augmented reality display rather than a physical monitor. Particularly noteworthy quotes that refer indirectly to presence include that “it feels surprisingly natural to use, with the potential to usher in a new era of personal computer”; “Spacetop feels like it’s a physical display truly present in the space with you”; and “I enjoyed taking a Teams video call using the giant screen and the conversation felt incredibly immersive, like the effect you get from going to a movie theater.” The original version of the story includes more pictures and a 43 second video (also available on YouTube), and there are more first-person reports in PC Magazine, PC World and The Verge. A press release is available via BusinessWire. –Matthew]

Hands On With Spacetop, the First Augmented Reality Laptop

This computer uses AR glasses to simulate a multi-monitor workstation.read more. “First-person report: Spacetop, the first augmented reality laptop”

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Call: ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2023)

Call for Papers/Posters/Demos

VRST 2023
ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology
Christchurch, New Zealand / In-person only
October 9-11, 2023
https://vrst.acm.org/vrst2023/

Submission deadlines:

  • Abstracts: June 12, 2023
  • Papers: June 19, 2023
  • Posters and demos: July 2, 2023

The 29th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, from Monday-Wednesday, 9-11 October 2023. The event is sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH.

VRST is a premier international symposium for the presentation of new research results, systems, and techniques among researchers and developers on virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR, XR for short) software and technology.

VRST brings together the main international research groups working on XR, along with many of the world’s leading companies that provide or utilise XR systems.

TOPICS:

VRST 2023 welcomes paper submissions relating (but not limited) to the following XR areas:

  • Display technology and interaction devices
  • Low-latency and high-performance software and applications
  • Multi-user and distributed XR
  • XR software environments and authoring systems
  • Interaction techniques
  • Tracking and sensing
  • Multimodal XR including haptics, smell, taste, and brain-computer interfaces
  • Audio & music processing, sound synthesis, and sonification
  • Computer vision, computer graphics, and rendering techniques
  • Immersive analytics
  • Diversity and Inclusion
  • Modeling and simulation techniques
  • Avatars and virtual humans, virtual embodiment, and body-ownership illusions
  • Teleoperation and telepresence
  • Performance testing, user experience, and empirical studies
  • Locomotion and navigation
  • Perception, presence, and cognition
  • XR applications, e.g.
read more. “Call: ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST 2023)”
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ReMotion telepresence robot: Your remote proxy automatically mirrors your movement and body language

[Researchers at Cornell have developed a telepresence robot that automatically mirrors a user’s physical movements and body language, which appears to enable “a heightened sense of co-presence and behavioral interdependence.” The story below is from the Cornell Chronicle; the new paper describing the project appears in the CHI 2023 Proceedings and features three videos, including a 4:51 minute presentation also available on YouTube. See lead author Mose Sakashita’s website for more interesting presence-related work. –Matthew]

[Image: Mose Sakashita, a doctoral student in the field of information science, with the ReMotion robot]

I, robot: Remote proxy collaborates on your behalf

By Louis DiPietro, Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science
May 11, 2023

Cornell researchers have developed a robot called ReMotion that occupies physical space on a remote user’s behalf, automatically mirroring the user’s movements in real time and conveying key body language that is lost in standard virtual environments.… read more. “ReMotion telepresence robot: Your remote proxy automatically mirrors your movement and body language”

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