Lucid Loop: A Virtual Deep Learning Biofeedback System for Lucid Dreaming Practice

Can a VR deep learn­ing biofeed­back help enhance lucid dream­ing prac­tice? Lucid dream­ing, know­ing one is dream­ing while dream­ing, is an impor­tant tool for explor­ing con­scious­ness and bring­ing aware­ness to dif­fer­ent aspects of life. We present a proof-of-concept system called “Lucid Loop”: a vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ence where one can prac­tice lucid aware­ness via biofeed­back. Visuals are cre­atively ge…

Connecting through JeL – bio-responsive VR for interpersonal synchronization

JeL is a bio-responsive, immer­sive, inter­ac­tive, gen­er­a­tive art instal­la­tion designed to encour­age phys­i­o­log­i­cal syn­chro­niza­tion between the imm­er­sants. In this project we will be explor­ing how novel forms of inter­ac­tion can be included in immer­sive tech­nol­ogy to foster the feel­ing of con­nec­tion between indi­vid­u­als inter­act­ing with the system. JeL will allow imm­er­sants to explore an under­wa­ter env…

Embodied & Intuitive Flying for VR, Gaming, and TeleOperation

Flying has been a dream for mankind for mil­lenia — but flying inter­faces for VR, gaming, and tele­op­er­a­tion (e.g., drones) typ­i­cally rely on cum­ber­some double-joystick/gamepads and do not allow for intu­itive and embod­ied flying expe­ri­ences. Here, we develop low-cost embod­ied flying inter­faces that adapt leaning-based motion cueing par­a­digms thus free­ing up hands for addi­tional tasks beyond just na…

Navigation Interface Tutorial

Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice First ver­sion held at IEEE VR 2017, Sunday, March 19, 1:30pm — 5:00pm, updated vari­ants of the tuto­r­ial will be pre­sented at ACM Chi 2018 (slides) and IEEE VR 2018. At The Spatial Cognition 2018 con­fer­ence we will present a new tuto­r­ial on Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments focus­ing more on the…

Gamified Research

Gamifying Research — Researchifying Games While tra­di­tional exper­i­men­tal par­a­digms offer tight stim­u­lus con­trol and repeata­bil­ity, then tend to be a bit boring and removed from many real-world sit­u­a­tions, which can limit real-world trans­fer­abil­ity of results. How can we bring together the method­olog­i­cal strenghs of research with the intrin­sic moti­va­tion of play­ful­ness and gaming? The …

Navigational Search in VR: Do Reference Frames Help?

Would the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a CAVE help to reduce dis­ori­en­ta­tion and improve nav­i­ga­tion per­for­mance in VR? Here, we show that simply pro­vid­ing the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a room (as a simple wire­frame cuboid), but not a CAVE improved nav­i­ga­tional search per­for­mance.   Despite recent advances in vir­tual real­ity, loco­mo­tion in a vir­tual envi­ron­ment is still restricted becau…

Lean and Elegant Motion Cueing in VR

How do we best design loco­mo­tion inter­faces for VR that pro­vide “enough” phys­i­cal motion cues (vestibular/proprioceptive) while still being effec­tive, afford­able, com­pact, and safe? Despite amaz­ing progress in com­puter graph­ics and VR dis­plays, most afford­able and room-sized VR loco­mo­tion inter­faces pro­vide only little phys­i­cal motion cues (e.g., vestibu­lar & pro­pri­o­cep­tive cues). To provide…

Pulse Breath Water

Pulse Breath Water is an immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ment manip­u­lated by the pulse of a participant’s breath that pro­vokes and chal­lenges the inter­ac­tion between a user and the sub­stan­tial ele­ment of the envi­ron­ment: water. The system “senses” the par­tic­i­pant, while the participant’s breath­ing feeds the system. The process is a sym­bi­otic play between inter­nal human processes [biosens­ing t…

Immersive & Embodied Teleoperation Interfaces

Developing vir­tual inter­faces for embod­ied tele-operation and loco­mo­tion. How can we best design and imple­ment an embod­ied telep­res­ence system for tele-robotics, so we can safely explore remote, hard-to-reach, or poten­tially haz­ardous areas or sit­u­a­tions? The goal of the “TeleSpider” project is to design and imple­ment a telep­res­ence system where users can remotely oper­ate a robotic spid…

state.scape: EEG-based Responsive Art Installation

Biofeedback in VR - SOLAR

Resonance in Virtual Environments: hack­ing biofeed­back for alter­ing user’s affec­tive states How can we com­bine immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ments (VE) with biofeed­back and gam­i­fi­ca­tion to foster relax­ation, de-stressing and med­i­ta­tive states? That is, instead of increas­ing sen­sory over­load, can we use the immer­sive and affec­tive poten­tial of VE and gam­i­fi­ca­tion to assist espe­cially novice meditato…

Motion Seats for VR

Using motion seats for enhanc­ing loco­mo­tion and immer­sion in VR How can we pro­vide a “moving expe­ri­ence” through VR with­out having to use a full-scale motion plat­form? Could a com­pact and rel­a­tively low-cost “motion seat” pro­vide some of the same ben­e­fits, thus reduc­ing cost, com­plex­ity, space & safety require­ments? Despite con­sid­er­able advances in Simulation and Virtual Real…

VR in Architecture Design & Review

How can we use immer­sive Virtual Reality and embod­ied loco­mo­tion inter­faces to to design more  cost– and space-efficient solu­tions for effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of archi­tec­tural designs and ideas?  Our over­all goal is to iter­a­tively design and eval­u­ate a novel embod­ied VR system that enables users to quickly, intu­itively, and pre­cisely posi­tion their vir­tual view­point in 3D space…

Cross-Disciplinary 'Immersion' Framework

Describing media as ‘immer­sive’ is ambigu­ous.  From debil­i­tat­ing addic­tion to ther­a­peu­tic relief, media engage­ment holds a clear dual­ity in its effect on human­ity… Without an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of “immer­sion”, why do we allow this con­cept to be so read­ily invoked in dis­cus­sions of books, visual art, video games, vir­tual real­ity sys­tems and more? While “immer­sion” into tr…

The Tabletop Makerspace

The table­top Makerspace was a Mitacs intern­ship project con­ducted in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Science World. A set of class­room tools was devel­oped to sup­port ‘Maker’ activ­i­ties at the museum. The tools included a home-built 3D printer and a set of elec­tron­ics kits for work­ing with the Arduino micro­con­troller. An intro­duc­tion to elec­tron­ics work­shop was devel­oped with local makers and Science World …

Gyroxus Gaming Chair for Motion Cueing in VR

Can self-motion per­cep­tion in vir­tual real­ity (VR) be enhanced by pro­vid­ing afford­able, user-powered min­i­mal motion cueing? Introduction & Motivation:  Can self-motion per­cep­tion in vir­tual real­ity (VR) be enhanced by pro­vid­ing afford­able, user-powered min­i­mal motion cueing? To inves­ti­gate this, we com­pared the effect of dif­fer­ent inter­ac­tion and motion par­a­digms on onset latency and intensi…

Embodied Self-Motion Illusions in VR

How can we pro­vide humans with a believ­able sen­sa­tion of being in and moving through computer-generated envi­ron­ments (like VR, com­puter games, or movies) with­out the need for costly and cum­ber­some motion plat­forms or large free-space walk­ing areas? That is, how can we “cheat intel­li­gently” by pro­vid­ing a com­pelling, embod­ied self-motion illu­sion (“vec­tion”) with­out the need for full phys­i­cal mo…

Navigational Search in VR: Do we need to walk?

Do we need full phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive nav­i­ga­tion through Virtual Environments? Recent results sug­gest that trans­la­tions might not be as impor­tant as pre­vi­ously believed, which could enable us to reduce over­all sim­u­la­tion effort and cost Physical rota­tions and trans­la­tions are the basic con­stituents of nav­i­ga­tion behav­ior, yet there is mixed evi­dence about their rel­a­tive impor­tance for co…

Spatial Cognition in VR vs. real world

Comparing spa­tial perception/cognition in real versus immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ments: it doesn’t com­pare! Virtual real­ity (VR) is increas­ingly used in psy­cho­log­i­cal research and appli­ca­tions – but does VR really afford nat­ural human spa­tial perception/cognition, which is a pre­req­ui­site for effec­tive spa­tial behav­ior? Using judg­ment of rel­a­tive direc­tion (JRD) tasks, Riecke & McNamara (Psychonom…

iSpaceMecha

Collaboration between the iSpace lab at SIAT and Mechatronics Undergraduate Interns to design and build a unique, vir­tual real­ity multi-modal motion sim­u­la­tor The iSpace pro­gram is cen­tered on inves­ti­gat­ing what con­sti­tutes effec­tive, robust, and intu­itive human spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion and behav­iour. This fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge will be applied to design novel, more effec­tive human-computer interfaces …

Sympathetic Guitar

Do humans response socially to abstract, expres­sive human-computer inter­faces? To inter­act with the Sympathetic Guitar is to use a famil­iar and com­fort­able Western musi­cal inter­face to feel an instant con­nec­tion to musi­cal cul­ture and style of the East.  The pro­to­type senses gui­tarists’ hand motions and per­for­mance dynam­ics to aug­ment a stan­dard clas­si­cal guitar with a dig­i­tal drone…

Spatial Updating With(out) Physical Motions?

How impor­tant are phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in VR? Most vir­tual real­ity sim­u­la­tors have a  seri­ous flaw: Users tend to get easily lost and dis­ori­ented as they nav­i­gate. According to the pre­vail­ing opin­ion, this is because phys­i­cal motion cues are absolutely required for stay­ing ori­ented while moving. In this study, we inves­ti­gated how phys­i­cal motion cues contribute …

Sonic Cradle

Sonic Cradle sus­pends the body is a com­pletely dark cham­ber which encour­ages expe­ri­ences com­pa­ra­ble to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion.  Users com­pose peace­ful sound­scapes in real-time using only their breath­ing. Introduction and demo of the Sonic Cradle Sonic Cradle is a relax­ing human-computer inter­ac­tion par­a­digm designed to foster med­i­ta­tive atten­tional pat­terns.  The cur­rent p…