[From The Bangor Daily News, where the story includes additional captioned images and a short video] [Image: Senior mechanical engineering student, Tim McGrath puts on a virtual reality headset in the Virtual Environment and Multimodal Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maine on Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. Brian Feulner | BDN] UMaine researchers working to shape the future of virtual sight By Nick McCrea, BDN Staff Posted Feb. 08, 2013 ORONO, Maine — Boardman Hall at the University of Maine is engulfed in flames. Fire alarms blare in the background and thick, disorienting smoke impairs your vision. But with the…

[From ExtremeTech] Augmented reality robot provides physical sensations from virtual characters By James Plafke on February 11, 2013 One of the most common tropes in science fiction is the ability to apply the image of a person over the frame of a robot, thus creating a visually identical copy of a human. Now, as Japanese startup Different Dimension Inc. (DDI) gears up to market a life-sized augmented reality robot, the world is one step closer to creating visual human doppelgangers. In recent science fiction, such as Minority Report or the “I Dated a Robot” episode of Futurama, fictional technology is…

[From Singularity Hub] Recording Your Life, Allowing Others To View It As Virtual Reality World: Lifelogging Written By: Peter Murray Posted: 02/10/13 It’s called Bad Trip, and it certainly feels like one. Alan Kwan has been recording every moment of his life since November 2011 and he faces the same problem that other lifeloggers do: what to do with all that video footage? Needing a way to organize the rapidly accumulating footage and to provide a way for he and others to easily navigate the data, Kwan has made a game of it. “Bad Trip” is an immersive virtual reality…

[From CSIRO; follow the link at the end for more information, including an interactive preview] Telepresence robot for museums With support from the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy we’re creating a mobile tele-presence robot to help virtually connect school kids and visitors in regional areas with our Australian to the National Museum of Australia. 25 January 2013 The challenge For many, a visit to a museum is an eye-opener, especially those institutions that offer hands-on interactive exhibits. But for even more people living in regional communities, museums are not hands-on; they are not even accessible, because of distance…

[From ChemViews Magazine] [Image: The pen of the haptic device translates quantum calculations into force feedback to ‘feel’ what’s going on in a reaction.  © Wiley-VCH] Feel Your Molecule’s Reactions DOI: 10.1002/chemv.201300006Author: Vera Köster Published Date: 17 January 2013 Source / Publisher: International Journal of Quantum Chemistry/Wiley Periodicals Copyright: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Learning by Touch The human being learns best by haptic sensing. This means by touching something and feeling its size, contour, surface texture, weight, etc. Small children start to explore their surrounding like this. Experiencing chemical reactions in this way would bring enormous advantages.…

[From The University of Texas at Dallas News Center] [Image: Dr. Balakrishnan Prabhakaran (right) moves a haptic device while Dr. Xiaohu Guo tracks the corresponding movement on the computer screen.] Researchers Pushing the Boundaries of Virtual Reality Devices That Detect and Convey Sense of Touch May Have Applications in Telemedicine Feb. 5, 2013 UT Dallas researchers are extending the borders of virtual reality, going beyond virtual spaces in which people can see and hear one another to an environment that adds the sense of touch. The technology would make it possible for physical therapists, for example, to work with patients…

[From The Huffington Post] [Image: Grand Theft Auto IV from BWT] Fear of Fun By Marty Kaplan, Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School Posted: 12/31/2012 Some day not all that far in the future, a new kind of entertainment is going to be perfected that will either be the coolest video game ever, or the media equivalent of a lethal man-made super-virus. You can predict what that entertainment might be like just by extrapolating from technology that already exists.…

[From The Huffington Post; see also “Artificial Artificial Intelligence (And Flirting Via Committee)” also at The Huffington Post] We’re Falling In Love With Our Phones Bianca Bosker, Executive Tech Editor, The Huffington Post Posted: 01/15/2013 Siri: humble assistant — and close friend? A survey of 1,000 cell phone owners commissioned by Nuance, a provider of voice recognition software, suggests that people are developing closer relationships with the virtual assistants on their smartphones. In the past decade, we’ve embraced software as a service. Will software as soulmate be next?…

[From Popular Science, where the story includes an additional image and two videos] [Image: The Digital Embodiment Of Editor In Chief Jacob Ward Big on “tele-” but not so much on “presence.” Dan Nosowitz] Popular Science Is Building The Telepresent Robotic Boss Of The Future To overcome the physical distance between our New York offices and our editor in chief–who lives and works on the West Coast–Popular Science is exploring the cutting edge of telepresence technologies. By Clay Dillow Posted 01.28.2013 Earth circa 1993 was a radically different place. In roughly two decades, technology has completely reorganized our lives, our…

[From Discovery News] Virtual Superheroes Are More Heroic In Real Life Jan 30, 2013 // by Nic Halverson “With great power comes great responsibility” is perhaps the most famous — albeit foreshortened — phrase in comic book history, attributed to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Amazing Fantasy #15, the issue that first introduced the world to Spider-Man. However, this adage also holds true for virtual superheroes. A recent study found that having superpowers in a virtual world made people more likely to be helpful in real life. The study, conducted by clinical psychologist Robin Rosenberg and colleagues from Stanford University’s…

[From Tech News Daily] [Image: To get a flu shot or not to get a flu shot? A new game lets researchers explore why people choose not to take precautions against disease outbreaks. CREDIT: CDC/Judy Schmidt] Game Reveals Why People Skip Condoms, Vaccinations Francie Diep, TechNewsDaily Staff Writer January 14 2013 A new game, loosely modeled after the spread of gonorrhea, offers a new way for researchers to study people’s motivations for choosing whether or not to use condoms, get flu shots or otherwise protect themselves from epidemics. The game may be the first specifically designed for studying the spread…

[From Kansas State University] [Image credit: The Buddha Center] Buddhism in Second Life: Anthropologist studies spirituality in virtual reality January 28, 2013 By Communications and Marketing A Kansas State University researcher is studying how religion — particularly Buddhism — fits into new forms of virtual reality. Jessica Falcone, assistant professor of sociology, anthropology and social work, studies South Asian cultures and religions, particularly Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism. Several of her current research projects focus on Buddhist communities, particularly the growing presence of Buddhism in the world of virtual reality.…