ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: May 2023

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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Call: AI and Fandom – Special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures

Call for Papers

AI and Fandom
Special issue of open-access journal Transformative Works and Cultures
https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/131

Submission deadline: January 1, 2024

Due in part to well-publicised advancements in generative AI technologies such as GPT-4, there has been a recent explosion of interest in – and hype around – Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Whether this hype cycle continues to grow or fades away, AI is anticipated to have significant repercussions for fandom (Lamerichs 2018), and is already inspiring polarised reactions. Fan artists have been candid about using creative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E to generate fan art, while fanfiction writers have been using ChatGPT to generate stories and share them online (there are 470 works citing the use of these tools on AO3 and 20 on FanFiction.net at the time of writing). It is likely the case that even greater numbers of fans are using such tools discreetly, to the consternation of those for whom this is a disruption of the norms and values of fan production and wider artistic creation (Cain 2023; shealwaysreads 2023).… read more. “Call: AI and Fandom – Special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures”

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Wendy’s, Google testing AI Chatbot as drive-through order taker

[The fast-food chain Wendy’s plans to replace human order-takers for its drive-through service with a more efficient AI chatbot, creating a medium-as-social-actor presence illusion in which “You won’t know you’re talking to anybody but an employee.” Most of the press coverage draws on this story from The Wall Street Journal. Fortune adds these details:

“Opinions on what AI will mean for workers and companies vary greatly, from massive disruption to marginal change. In the view of Presto Automation, which offers an AI ordering platform for restaurants, the technology will shake up the industry. ‘I don’t think in three years, there’s going to be a drive-thru having a human take your orders,’ Krishna Gupta, Presto’s chairman and interim chief executive officer, told Bloomberg Television last week. […]

At the test location, a restaurant employee will monitor the drive-thru to make sure the AI can address all requests and be there in case a customer asks to speak with a human, according to Wendy’s Chief Information Officer Kevin Vasconi. … read more. “Wendy’s, Google testing AI Chatbot as drive-through order taker”

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Call: New Perspectives on Joint Attention – Special issue of Topoi

Call for Papers

New Perspectives on Joint Attention
Special issue of Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy
https://www.springer.com/journal/11245/updates/23781996

Guest editors:
Anna Bloom-Christen (University of California, Los Angeles, abc22@g.ucla.edu)
Michael Wilby (Anglia Ruskin University, Michael.Wilby@aru.ac.uk)

Deadline for manuscript submission: May 31, 2023

INTRODUCTION:

Joint attention has generated a lot of discussion within a range of areas, most notably developmental psychology and philosophy (Eilan et al 2005; Seemann 2011; Metcalfe and Terrace 2014; Seemann 2021). It is often thought to be deeply implicated in our understanding of other minds (Heal 2005; Schmitz 2014, Martens 2021), our understanding of communicative utterances (Campbell 2019; Seemann 2019; Harder 2022), the development of language learning (Sabbagh & Baldwin 2005), and the capacity for collaborative joint action (Fiebich & Gallagher 2013). Some have argued that, in its full-blown guise, it is part of a suite of distinctively human capacities that underpin the normativity of human interactions which allow for cumulative culture (Tomasello et al 2005; Kern and Moll 2017).… read more. “Call: New Perspectives on Joint Attention – Special issue of Topoi”

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Google’s Project Starline Is an ambitious cure to my remote worker loneliness

[Here’s a first-person report from Gizmodo on a demonstration of the latest version of Google’s Project Starline telepresence system, which was initially a large booth and is now reduced to a large flat screen monitor. See other first-person reports from Engadget and TechCrunch. The TechCrunch story includes a technical description:

“Quoting from a Google research publication on the technology:

‘Our system achieves key 3D audiovisual cues (stereopsis, motion parallax, and spatialized audio) and enables the full range of communication cues (eye contact, hand gestures, and body language), yet does not require special glasses or body-worn microphones/headphones. The system consists of a head-tracked autostereoscopic display, high-resolution 3D capture and rendering subsystems, and network transmission using compressed color and depth video streams. Other contributions include a novel image-based geometry fusion algorithm, free-space dereverberation, and talker localization.’”

VRScout adds this:

“No word yet on when (or if) this prototype will become available as a consumer product.… read more. “Google’s Project Starline Is an ambitious cure to my remote worker loneliness”

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Call: CONVERSATIONS 2023 – 7th International Workshop on Chatbot Research, Applications and Design

Call for Papers

CONVERSATIONS 2023 – 7th International Workshop on Chatbot Research, Applications and Design
University of Oslo, Norway and online
November 22-23, 2023
https://2023.conversations.ws/

Submission deadline: September 10, 2023

Welcome to CONVERSATIONS 2023, a two-day workshop on chatbot research, applications, and design. This is the 7th CONVERSATIONS workshop. With the surge of interest in chatbots powered by large language models over the last few months, the workshop is possibly more relevant than ever before. Join in for sharing and collaborating between researchers and practitioners in the field.

The workshop is located in Oslo, Norway. However, to accommodate for participation also for those not able to be there in person, the workshop will include some online sessions as part of the full on-site program. We look forward to both onsite and virtual contributions.

Researchers and practitioners are encouraged to submit papers and proposals for inclusion in the workshop, considering the following submission categories:

FULL PAPERS: Empirical studies, theoretical contributions, design research, or presentations of chatbot systems and applications that advance the state-of-the-art (12-16 pages, Springer LNCS format).… read more. “Call: CONVERSATIONS 2023 – 7th International Workshop on Chatbot Research, Applications and Design”

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Music could be key to curbing cybersickness

[A new study supports the use of joyful and calming music to reduce cybersickness caused by virtual reality experiences. The study is described in this news release from The University of Edinburgh. In the researchers’ published article, they write that the results “support the notion that pleasant music is efficient in mitigating cybersickness due to distraction from stimuli, as well as an elicitation of positive emotions.” and “In summary, the implementation of music appears to be a cost-effective, suitable (i.e., without preventing other interactions or breaking the immersion), and efficient technique for mitigating cybersickness in immersive VR.” –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: Masket/Getty Images]

Music could be key to curbing cybersickness

Listening to music could reduce the dizziness, nausea and headaches virtual reality users might experience after using digital devices, research suggests.

May 2, 2023

Cybersickness – a type of motion sickness from virtual reality experiences such as computer games – significantly reduces when joyful music is part of the immersive experience, the study found.… read more. “Music could be key to curbing cybersickness”

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Call: Designing Map-based Interfaces and Interactions (MAPII 2023) – INTERACT 2023 Workshop

Call for Papers

Designing Map-based Interfaces and Interactions (MAPII 2023)
INTERACT 2023 Workshop
28 August 2023
York, UK [and in remote or hybrid mode if necessary]
Workshop: http://avcd.aalto.fi/mapii2023/
INTERACT 2023: https://interact2023.org

Submission deadline: May 29, 2023

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

Maps, in their many forms, have long been used to guide and coordinate different human activities, ranging from local to global, and small scale to large scale. As such, maps continue to play a central role as the basis for a wide variety of interactive tools and applications in our modern digital age as well. This workshop aims to bring together researchers, designers and practitioners interested in maps and map-like visualizations as the underlying physical, theoretical, or metaphorical framework for designing interfaces and interactions. This workshop will create a common ground and a collaborative space for sharing design, research, and practical expertise to aid its participants with creating novel future map-based designs in different fields, including visualization, visual design, interaction design, user interface design, and cartography.… read more. “Call: Designing Map-based Interfaces and Interactions (MAPII 2023) – INTERACT 2023 Workshop”

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Embodied AI: Big tech is developing powerful AI brains for real-world robots

[Not only are researchers linking conversational AI to digital avatars (as in an ISPR Presence News post last week), making them more likely to evoke medium-as-social-actor presence, they’re using AI to make embodied robots more capable of human-like behavior and interactions. Here are highlights of a March 2023 VICE story titled “Big tech is now developing powerful AI brains for real-world robots. Building on recent AI advancements to allow robots to complete tasks autonomously in the real world is a ‘major step forward,’ researchers say.”:

Researchers at Google and the Berlin Institute of Technology have released an AI model called PaLM-E this week that combines language and vision capabilities to control robots, allowing them to complete tasks autonomously in the real world… According to the researchers, this is the largest Visual Language Model (VLM) reported to date, with 562 billion parameters.… read more. “Embodied AI: Big tech is developing powerful AI brains for real-world robots”

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