ACM SIGGRAPH Frontiers Workshop on Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence

Speaker(s):

Joaquim Jorge is Full Professor of Computer Graphics and Multimedia at the Departamento de Engenharia Informática do Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/jorgej, and Scientific Coordinator of the Research Group on Visualization and Multimodal Interfaces of the Institute for Computer and Systems Engineering INESC-ID. He was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1999 and has been Adjunct Professor with the Computer Science Department of the University of Calgary since 2006. He was a Visiting Professor at the Tech. Univ. of Vienna in 2012.

Dr Morie’s has 30 years of researching & creating meaningful VR experiences, combining multi-sensory, perceptual techniques for VR that predictably elicit emotional responses from participants. Her company All These Worlds, LLC is active in social VR, Mindfulness, storytelling & stress relief applications. In 2016 she concluded a project for NASA called ANSIBLE, a full virtual world ecosystem designed to provide psychological benefits for future astronauts who will undertake extremely long isolated missions to Mars. She also investigates the use of avatars—both digital and robotic—for how affect our human selves. She is currently a senior advisor to the XPRIZE’s ANA Avatar Prize challenges teams to create a robotic avatar that people can inhabit from a distance.

Arindam Dey is a Lecturer at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering and Co-Director of the Empathic Extended Reality and Pervasive Computing Laboratory. His research is focused on making extended reality interfaces capable of measuring, sharing, and adapting to user’s real-time emotional and cognitive states. Before joining the University of Queensland, he was a Research Fellow at the Empathic Computing Laboratory (University of South Australia). Earlier, he held postdoctoral positions at the University of Tasmania, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (USA), and James Cook University.

Mark Billinghurst is Professor at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, and Professor in the Bio-Engineering Institute at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He earned a PhD in 2002 from the University of Washington and researches how virtual and real worlds can be merged, publishing over 400 papers in topics such as wearable computing, and Augmented Reality. Prior to joining the University of South Australia he was founding Director of the HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury. In 2013 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Paul is a Senior Staff Engineer at Google on the Daydream team, and Adjunct Research Professor of Computer Science in the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. His research has been recognized by The New Yorker magazine and numerous awards, including the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award (2001), two Scientific and Engineering Academy Awards (2010 and 2019), and SMPTE Progress Medal (2017).

Janet Wiles' research focusses on: Human-robot interactions, language technologies, bio-inspired computation, visualisation and artificial intelligence. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney in computer science. She is research leader of the Co-Innovation group in UQ's School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE), and UQ node leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language.

Ian Hall is an engineer and digital imaging product strategist. As CPO of Yulio Technologies, he has been at the forefront of bringing VR and AR into everyday practice at some of the world’s leading architecture, interior design, and commercial products companies. He was previously Director of Product for Truespectra Inc., an early innovator in cloud-based imaging technology, later acquired by Adobe.

Andrew Glassner is a Senior Research Scientist at Weta Digital, where he works on applying deep learning to the production of visual effects for movies and television. Glassner has served as Papers Chair of the SIGGRAPH '94 Papers Committee, Founding Editor of the Journal of Computer Graphics Tools, and Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics. A popular speaker, Glassner has delivered invited addresses to groups around the world on topics ranging from computer graphics and deep learning to story structure and narrative. Andrew is a well-known writer of numerous technical papers and books. His book "3D Computer Graphics: A Handbook for Artists and Designers" has taught a generation of artists. Glassner created and edited the "Graphics Gems" series, edited the classic book "An Introduction to Ray Tracing," and wrote the two-volume text "Principles of Digital Image Synthesis." His most recent book is "Deep Learning: From Basics to Practice." Glassner has written and directed live-action and animated films, and was creator-writer-director of an online multiplayer murder-mystery game for The Microsoft Network. He has written novels and screenplays, and is developing a serialized story for podcast. He has carried out research at labs such as the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, Xerox PARC, and Microsoft Research. Andrew holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Voting Member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In his spare time, Andrew paints, composes music, plays jazz piano, writes for children, and hikes.

Anthony Steed is Head of the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at University College London. He has over 25 years' experience in developing virtual reality and other forms of novel user interface system. He has long been interested in creating effective immersive experiences. While originally most of his work considered the engineering of displays and software, more recently it has focussed on user engagement in virtual reality, embodied cognition and the general problem of how to create more effective experiences through careful design of the immersive interface. He received the IEEE VGTC's 2016 Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award.

Stefanie Zollmann is a Lecturer for Computer Science at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Before joining the University of Otago, she worked as a senior developer and researcher for computer vision and graphics for sports broadcasting and visualization at Animation Research Ltd in New Zealand. Before that, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher and research assistant at the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision at Graz University of Technology in Austria. She obtained a PhD degree in Computer Science from the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision in Graz in 2013 and graduated in Computer Science (with a focus on Media technology) at Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany in 2007. Her main research interest is in Visual Computing for media, broadcasting and sports. In particular, she is interested in visualization techniques for augmented reality and new interface technology, but also in mobile augmented reality and spatial augmented reality.

Description: [Organizer: Prof Joaquim Jorge] This workshop explores two of the hottest areas in computing right now; Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, and especially their combination.

Thanks to an explosion of affordable yet powerful displays and mobile phones, Virtual and Augmented Reality have become household terms. Over a billion people now have devices in the home or in their pockets that can run AR or VR applications. Yet, providing rich and enticing user experiences still poses major challenges.

Envisioning exciting applications is driving a convergence between advanced Computer Graphics and other research communities which have been traditionally separate — namely Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality. Combining intelligent techniques, user interfaces and tools, embodied or not, together with effective, realistic and real-time visualization and multimodal interaction is giving rise to new areas in entertainment, engineering, medical, education and other domains.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore these novel realms, discuss the major research challenges they pose and explore interdisciplinary approaches to tackle them, towards a research and development agenda for the future.

Program: 9:00am - 4:30pm

Welcome Joaquim Jorge: 10min

9:10am - 10:40am: First Session

20 mins: Mark Billinghurst: Slides

20 mins: Stephanie Zollman: Slides

20 mins: Andrew Glassner: Slides

30 mins: Panel Discussion (J Jorge)

10:40am - 11:00am: Coffee Break

11:00am - 12:30 PM: Second Morning Session

20 mins: Paul Debevec: Slides

20 mins: Janet Wiles: Slides

20 mins: Arindam Dey: Slides

30 mins: Panel Discussion (Ian Hall)

12:30 - 14:10: Speakers Lunch provided

14:30 - 16:30 Afternoon Session

20 mins: Anthony Steed: Slides

20 mins: Jacki Morie: Slides

20 mins: Ian Hall: Slides

30 mins: Panel Discussion (A Dey)

ACM SIGGRAPH Frontiers Workshops Speakers Mixer: 16:30 - 17:30