[An enhanced version of the award-winning empathy-evoking presence experience Body of Mine that explores gender dysphoria and which was previously only available as an installation at festivals, is now available for Meta Quest VR headsets. The Forbes story below includes a first-person description of the experience (with a key spoiler). UploadVR adds these details: “While the SteamVR version requires five HTC Vive Trackers and a high-spec PC, thanks to the development team at Agile Lens, Body of Mine uses ‘advanced in-headset motion capture’ that integrates Meta’s full-body synthesis on Quest. It also supports hand tracking and Quest Pro eye tracking.…

[This story from Tech Times explains the benefits, first to researchers and then for training new drivers, of a new mixed reality simulator being developed at Cornell University. The new simulator illustrates differences in and allows comparisons of presence experiences across different technologies. Follow the link at the end of the story to read coverage in the Cornell Chronicle; you can watch the 9:40 minute CHI 2024 presentation on YouTube; and an April 2022 story from Tech Xplore describes some of the team’s earlier work. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot from animated gif posted on X by co-author Fanjun (Frank) Bu with…

[Here’s another application of presence for training people for a dangerous profession in a safe, virtual environment. The original version of this University of Utah story includes two more images and a 57 second video (also available on YouTube). For more information see a 2021 story in FedTech Magazine and a 2020 story in Safety+Health Magazine. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot of a module to learn safety techniques in an underground mine. Credit: HOTO Minverso/University of Utah] Immersive VR trains miners for the real world By David Pace, College of Science, University of UtahJune 6, 2024 It’s the end of a shift…

[Reactions to a robot in South Korea falling down a flight of stairs has apparently generated widespread medium-as-social-actor presence and triggered conversations about the integration of robots in society (“especially in roles traditionally occupied by humans”) and the ethical treatment of robots and AI. The story below is from Interesting Engineering; see coverage in DesignTAXI for more information and images. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Koreaboo] Civil servant robot ‘commits suicide’, deadly plunge under probe Witnesses saw the robot erratically circling before its fall, sparking speculation about the cause. By Aman TripathiJune 29, 2024 A first-of-its-kind incident has shocked the world after…

[This report from The Sector describes another application of presence in education, in this case via a simulated infant for students in early childhood education training programs who don’t have access to a real-life infant. Here’s a key quote from University of Canterbury Associate Professor Heide Lukosch: “We’re really intrigued by the opportunity and the power of virtual environments to help people in situations that would be otherwise hard to access, or potentially dangerous. In this case, we aim to create a virtual, immersive environment that enables the user to really feel present and accountable for their actions in certain…

[As some readers will know, I love trains (officially I’m a railfan or railway enthusiast). So I was particularly interesting in a recent Facebook post by the Oyster Bay Railroad Museum in Long Island, New York, announcing its new, custom simulator that provides users with a presence-evoking experience of operating a train on the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), “the busiest commuter railroad in North America.” The post includes a 1:57 minute video of the simulator in action, and the Museum’s website describes other presence experiences available, notably an augmented reality experience featuring President Theodore Roosevelt: “Theodore Roosevelt is your interactive…

[In The Conversation, a group of Australian researchers introduce the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations and the recent development of “avatar therapy” via virtual reality and video conferencing (Zoom) to address it. The therapy “allows a person to create a virtual representation of the voice or voices [they hear]… [and] regain power in the ‘relationship’ as they interact with the voice character, supported by a therapist.” See the original version of this report for two more images, and for much more information follow the links in the “Coping with hearing voices“ and “Gaining recognition” sections, including to the article “AVATAR Therapy…

[In what Futurism calls “a sneaky but clever experiment,  researchers at the University of Reading in the UK submitted AI-generated responses to short answer and essay test questions in psychology courses and the (human) graders both failed to detect the use of artificial intelligence technology and gave the AI answers higher grades. The story from The Guardian below provides details; for more information see the University’s story about the project and the study published in PLOS ONE. Although little of the press coverage notes the small sample (BBC News is an exception), or that AI-generated answers received lower grades for…

[Researchers have developed a way to attach living human skin to robots, with several potential benefits including making future robots appear and communicate more like humans (and thereby evoke more effective medium-as-social-actor presence). The key details are reported in the story below from New Scientist. More information is in the University of Tokyo press release, including this concluding paragraph: “’In this study, we managed to replicate human appearance to some extent by creating a face with the same surface material and structure as humans,’ said [Professor Shoji] Takeuchi. ‘Additionally, through this research, we identified new challenges, such as the necessity…

[This story from Vanity Fair is being cited in much of the coverage of an announcement by the NBC television network that a simulated version of legendary broadcaster Al Michaels’ voice will be used to create personalized 10-minute daily highlight videos during the 2024 Summer Olympics. The NBC press release about this latest milestone in artificial intelligence and presence notes that “’Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock [NBC’s streaming platform]’ will be featured in Peacock’s homepage and Olympics hub and available at the individual profile level, so up to six users on one account can receive their own recaps. The…

[There are many compelling ways to teach students about presence. Although the term isn’t explicitly mentioned in this story from Penn Today, it’s clearly an important element in Professor Jeffrey Vadala’s “Making Virtual Worlds” course at the University of Pennsylvania, which he describes as “a mix of anthropology, archaeology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy” along with instruction and experience in “the technical skills of graphics technologies like the Unreal Engine [and] Unity.” See the original story for three more images. –Matthew] [Image: Lorraine Ruppert, right, donned a virtual reality headset to work on her final project for the Making Virtual Worlds…

[Using presence experiences to increase empathy is becoming more common, including in the context of health care, but this story from The Times of Israel provides a vivid description of the need and benefits of such efforts in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. See the original version of the story for five more images and a 2:53 minute video news report (also available on YouTube). –Matthew] [Image: Three medical students at Baruch Padeh (Poriya) Medical Center in Tiberias, Israel using OtheReality VR headsets] Virtual reality app lets medical staff get a patient’s-eye view Israeli start-up OtheReality allows doctors to…