[mHealthIntelligence reports on a new effort to expand the use of virtual reality and presence to medical treatment at home. For more information see coverage in VRWorldTech Magazine: Issue 2, XRHealth videos on YouTube, and a related second mHealthIntelligence story. –Matthew] [Image: Graphic screenshot from XRHealth – Smarter Tools for Smarter Recoveries video via YouTube.] New Clinics Use Telehealth to Bring VR Treatments to the Patient’s Home This March, payers and care providers in eight states and the District of Columbia will be able to prescribe VR therapy through a telehealth clinic, giving patients the chance to receive treatment at…

[Wired reports on Projekt Melody, a new multi-platform interactive cartoon character designed to evoke social presence and at least partially succeeding (with echoes of the film Her in the second-to-last paragraph). For other features regarding presence and sexuality, see a different Wired story about Henry, a new AI-enabled male sex doll from RealBotix; a 23:37 minute Think About This podcast discussion titled “Is Sex With A Robot Cheating?”; a 7:28 minute discussion about sex robots from WSAU Wisconsin Morning News; and a humorous but thought-provoking 6:14 minute video segment about “Robosexuals” from HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher via YouTube.…

[An interdisciplinary application of presence in a program at County College of Morris in New Jersey is described in this story from the College. The original includes a second picture and a February 19, 2020 3:10 minute video news report is available from NJTV News. –Matthew] CCM Virtual Reality Program Provides Students with Real-World Training Developing Forensic Science Investigation Skills in Simulated Settings December 13, 2019 Students enrolled in a Forensic Science or Investigative Function class at County College of Morris (CCM) recently were engaged in a crime scene as close to real-world as they could get through a capstone…

[This story from 9to5Google provides a quick summary of a major step in the evolution of chatbots and their ability to evoke presence. See the original version, or the more detailed Google AI blog post it reports on, for more details; for two evaluations of what the development means see coverage in ZDNet and VentureBeat. –Matthew] Google working on human-like chatbots that contextually respond to anything Abner Li January 28, 2020 Chatbots were all the craze last decade, and they’re now commonly found when interacting with support lines. Today, conversational agents are a bit limited, and Google is working towards…

[This story from TechCrunch describes a new media format that puts users’ personalized avatars into short animated stories. See the original version of the story for five different pictures and a 1:32 minute video. For more information, see an interview with the Bitmoji co-founder and CEO in Women Love Tech, which includes this presence-related quote: “While this began with a very specific focus on comics, over time the way people were communicating – and even existing – via their phones was evolving. More and more we were talking in text, more and more we were seeing our friends through our…

[In a recent (February 2020) post here about virtual reality and accessibility I was struck by this comment: “[A] woman I interviewed told me that after struggling for years with gender dysphoria, the experience of putting on a headset and inhabiting not just another place, but another body of a sort, led instead to a sense of ‘gender euphoria.’ It was, paradoxically, the first time she said she had really felt like herself. Toward the end of our conversation, she mentioned that a lot of her peers seemed to choose different genders and races for their virtual avatars, surmising that…

[This post from IEEE Spectrum describes a major initiative to conduct research to understand the dynamics of, and develop sophisticated media technology that evokes, both remote telepresence and medium-as-social-actor presence. See the original version for five more pictures and two videos. –Matthew] [Image: Some of Haru’s unique features distinguish it from other social robots and suggest new opportunities for human-robot interaction. Credit: Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum] Meet Haru, the Unassuming Big-Eyed Robot Helping Researchers Study Social Robotics Honda Research Institute roboticists are experimenting with social robots as a new kind of trustful companion By Dr. Randy Gomez, a senior scientist at…

[Here’s a nice summary from WebMD of different ways virtual reality and the presence it evokes are being used in medicine; for more on the study of VR for women in labor see MedPage Today and Good Morning America. –Matthew] [Image: Erin Martucci, of New York, used virtual reality while in labor with her daughter Elizabeth. Source: Good Morning America.] Virtual Reality Brings New Vision to Health Care By Jennifer Clopton February 10, 2020 Linda Larrimore has been getting chemotherapy every other week for 6 years to treat and manage colon cancer. The chemotherapy is keeping her health stable, so…

[It may sound like an episode of Black Mirror (to name the specific one would constitute a spoiler), but the author of this piece from Wired presents the benefits and risks of virtual prisons, where presence has a prominent role. –Matthew] Forget prisons, the future of punishment will be virtual Physical jails don’t work. Will virtual punishment succeed in replacing them – or will it just create more risks? By Tom Gash, honorary senior lecturer at University College London’s Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science 10 February 2020 Prisons have become the dominant symbol of punishment in modern democracies. But…

[A compelling example of the desire and potential benefits of using technology to simulate loved ones who have died is reported in this story from Road to VR. The original version includes more images and the 9:38 minute documentary segment referenced; for more details about the documentary and viewer reactions see coverage in Koreaboo, and for more on the uses of technology to transcend death and the ethical questions this latest effort raises, see coverage in Virtual Reality Times. –Matthew] Mother Meets Recreation of Her Deceased Child in VR By Scott Hayden February 7, 2020 South Korean TV broadcaster MBC…

[This story explains how one company developed and is implementing the use of VR and presence to train drivers of trucks that carry hazardous and other materials to prepare them to deal with dangerous but rare situations. It’s from CCJ (Commercial Carrier Journal), where it includes a second image; Forbes has a related story. –Matthew] Innovators: Trimac Transportation removes real-world dangers through virtual reality training Jason Cannon January 15, 2020 CCJ Innovators profiles carriers and fleets that have found innovative ways to overcome trucking’s challenges. The difficulty in learning how to deal with dangerous situations is fairly clear. It’s hard…

[This Gizmodo story describes how using artificial intelligence to enhance a famous “actuality” film from the dawn of cinema said to have evoked intense presence responses at the time makes it look “like it could have been shot just yesterday on a smartphone or a GoPro” and alters the viewing experience. The original story includes both version of the film. Coverage in The Next Web adds that “The video’s also had sound added, which makes it all the more eerily… normal,” and references an article in The Moving Image (via ResearchGate) about reactions to the original film. A commenter on…