Author: Matthew Lombard

A model for DIY virtual museums: VR brings together places, objects and stories behind Scotland’s national bard

Published:

January 17, 2024

[A project at Glasgow University uses virtual reality (and presence) to create virtual experiences that bring together diverse locations, memorabilia and stories to celebrate Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns. As this story from The Guardian notes, the project is part of larger venture to “create virtual reality guides that will allow individuals to open their own VR museums and allow visitors to enjoy collections assembled from across the globe.” See the original story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: A VR recreation of Alloway Auld Kirk, the setting for his supernatural poem, Tam o’Shanter. Credit: The University of Glasgow] Egg…
Read more: A model for DIY virtual museums: VR brings together places, objects and stories behind Scotland’s national bard
Call: CoG 2024: The 2024 IEEE Conference on Games

Published:

January 16, 2024

Call for Papers IEEE CoG 2024: The 2024 IEEE Conference on Games August 5-8, 2024 Milan, Italy https://2024.ieee-cog.org/ Submission deadline for full papers: March 1, 2024 Submission deadline for auxiliary papers: April 28, 2024 The annual IEEE Conference on Games (IEEE CoG) aims to be a leading venue for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and novel approaches to bring innovation in and through games. Games are a great domain to study and develop novel ideas in design, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, psychology, education, sociology, and creativity, as well as their applications in real-world problems. IEEE CoG 2024 will take…
Read more: Call: CoG 2024: The 2024 IEEE Conference on Games
How Amazon is using AI to make conversations with Alexa more “natural”

Published:

January 16, 2024

[This September 2023 post from About Amazon describes how the company is incorporating artificial intelligence to make interactions with its voice assistant Alexa more natural (like “talking to another human”). See the original version for a second image and two videos. At CES 2024, Amazon announced three new AI skills, described in a new story from Tech.co, and Tech Brew spoke with the director of Amazon’s “voice-focused venture arm” Alexa Fund, about “how the company is thinking about the future of AI in voice applications.” –Matthew] Previewing the future of Alexa By Daniel Rausch, Vice President, Alexa and Fire TV…
Read more: How Amazon is using AI to make conversations with Alexa more “natural”
Call: RO-MAN 2024, 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication

Published:

January 15, 2024

Call for Papers RO-MAN 2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication Pasadena, California, USA [and possibly online; see below] August 26-30, 2024 https://www.ro-man2024.org/ Important Dates: Special Session Proposals: Submission Deadline: January 19, 2024 Notification of Acceptance: February 2, 2024 Workshops & Tutorial Proposals: Submission Deadline: February 9, 2024 Notification of Acceptance: March 8, 2024 Regular Papers, Special Session Papers: Submission Deadline: March 10, 2024 Notification of Acceptance: May 10, 2024 Camera-ready Deadline: June 7, 2024 Late Breaking Reports: Submission deadline: May 17, 2024 Notification of acceptance: June 7, 2024 The 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot…
Read more: Call: RO-MAN 2024, 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication
VALID: A perceptually validated virtual avatar library for inclusion and diversity

Published:

January 15, 2024

[With the acknowledgment that “societal bias and dynamics” apply to interactions with avatars in virtual and augmented reality, Google and University of Central Florida researchers have produced a new open-source Virtual Avatar Library for Inclusion and Diversity (VALID). The details, including the presence-related phenomena that make the Library vital, are in this post from the Google Research blog (where the original features large versions of the picture below and four others). –Matthew] [Image: Headshots of all 42 base avatars available on the VALID library were created in extensive interaction with members of the 7 ethnic and racial groups from the…
Read more: VALID: A perceptually validated virtual avatar library for inclusion and diversity
Call: IVA 2024: ACM 24th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Published:

January 12, 2024

Call for Submissions ACM 24th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents September 16-19, 2024 University of Glasgow, Scotland https://iva.acm.org/2024/ Submission deadline: April 5, 2024 Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) Annual Conference is the premier international event for interdisciplinary research on the design, application, and evaluation of Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) with a specific focus on the ability to socially interact. IVA 2024, the 24th Annual Conference, will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, September 16-19, 2024. Note IVA 2024 will be co-located with the conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII). IVAs are interactive characters that exhibit human-like capabilities including communicating…
Read more: Call: IVA 2024: ACM 24th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Apple says Vision Pro is a “spatial computing” platform – how that’s different from VR and AR

Published:

January 12, 2024

[As 9TO5Mac reports in a widely cited story, new Apple guidelines tell developers to refer to their apps for the company’s new, expensive, presence-evoking Vison Pro product without “using terms such as AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), XR (extended reality), or MR (mixed reality). Instead, Apple says that visionOS apps are ‘spatial computing apps,’” and that the “Vision Pro is a spatial computing platform.” The story below from Fast Company does a nice job of explaining and illustrating the differences (see the original version for a video). –Matthew] [Images: Credits: Tetiana Lazunova/Getty Images; puttapon/Getty Images] What is spatial computing?…
Read more: Apple says Vision Pro is a “spatial computing” platform – how that’s different from VR and AR
Call: SCAI 2024 – The 14th Scandinavian Conference on AI

Published:

January 11, 2024

Call for Papers SCAI 2024 – The 14th Scandinavian Conference on AI June 10-11, 2024 Jönköping, Sweden https://ju.se/samarbeta/event-och-konferenser/konferens/scai-symposium-2024/ Submission deadline: March 22, 2024 THEME: AI FOR A BETTER SOCIETY In the last years, research on Artificial Intelligence has made both academia and industry to take a more active role in engaging with the general public. The immense success of recent results appears almost endless, but they are not without faults or concerns. Addressing the role these technologies can have in human society is therefore important. The 14th Scandinavian Conference on AI (SCAI’24) invites researchers and industry practitioners working on all…
Read more: Call: SCAI 2024 – The 14th Scandinavian Conference on AI
University of Alberta remote rehabilitation program brings medical specialists to rural patients

Published:

January 11, 2024

[The positive impacts of presence-evoking technologies for medical treatment of patients who live in rural areas of Canada are described in this story from the University of Alberta; in coverage of the telerehabilitation program in the St. Albert Gazette adds this detail: “It’s an uncanny thing, in that when you’re using this robot, it feels like that urban clinician is in the room,” [rehabilitation medicine professor Martin] Ferguson-Pell said. “It’s very important because the patient wants to build a relationship of trust with that virtual connection that they have with the Urban clinician. And the use of the telepresence robot…
Read more: University of Alberta remote rehabilitation program brings medical specialists to rural patients
Call: 10th Games and Natural Language Processing Workshop (Games and NLP 2024)

Published:

January 10, 2024

Call for Papers The 10th Games and Natural Language Processing (Games and NLP 2024) At LREC-COLING 2024 – The 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation May 21, 2024 https://gamesandnlp.com Submission deadline: February 19, 2024 The Games and NLP Workshop at LREC-COLING 2024 will be a full day workshop examining the use of games and gamification for Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, as well as how NLP research can advance player engagement and communication within games. The workshop will have presentations of accepted papers (full, short, extended abstracts), an invited talk, and a poster and demo…
Read more: Call: 10th Games and Natural Language Processing Workshop (Games and NLP 2024)
What “Her” can teach us about love in the age of artificial intimacy

Published:

January 10, 2024

[Ten years after the entertaining and thought-provoking portrayal of medium-as-social-actor presence in the film Her, our parasocial interactions and relationships with digital persona are increasingly complicated. This story from Inverse is a good primer; see the original version for five more images and a video (note that the story includes a spoiler near the end). –Matthew] What Her Can Teach Us About Love In the Age of Artificial Intimacy 10 years later, Spike Jonze sci-fi masterpiece has only become more poignant. By Becca Caddy December 30, 2023 Imagine a perfect partner: One who always texts back, listens, and remembers even…
Read more: What “Her” can teach us about love in the age of artificial intimacy
Call: “POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness” live online immersive performance by CirqueSaw

Published:

January 9, 2024

Call for Participation POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness An award-winning, live digital immersive and interactive performance by CirqueSaw Created by Nathan Leigh Performed by Nicole Orabona February 8-10, 2024 https://cirquesaw.com/pov-ai/ Tickets: https://cirquesaw.wellattended.com/events/pov-you-are-an-ai-achieving-consciousness POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed live digital performance by CirqueSaw. The digitally native immersive and interactive piece explores the intersection of art, philosophy, and technology, using a custom interactive platform to add new layers of interactivity to virtual performance. Created by playwright and composer Nathan Leigh and performed by Nicole Orabona, POV invites the audience to go beyond discussions about…
Read more: Call: “POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness” live online immersive performance by CirqueSaw

International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

A model for DIY virtual museums: VR brings together places, objects and stories behind Scotland’s national bard

Call: CoG 2024: The 2024 IEEE Conference on Games

How Amazon is using AI to make conversations with Alexa more “natural”

Call: RO-MAN 2024, 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication

VALID: A perceptually validated virtual avatar library for inclusion and diversity

Call: IVA 2024: ACM 24th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Apple says Vision Pro is a “spatial computing” platform – how that’s different from VR and AR

Call: SCAI 2024 – The 14th Scandinavian Conference on AI

University of Alberta remote rehabilitation program brings medical specialists to rural patients

Call: 10th Games and Natural Language Processing Workshop (Games and NLP 2024)

What “Her” can teach us about love in the age of artificial intimacy

Call: “POV: You Are An AI Achieving Consciousness” live online immersive performance by CirqueSaw

ISPR Presence News

Search ISPR Presence News:

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

Recent Comments