iSpace Research Lab

Earlier this month, Bernhard pre­sented at the International Conference on Spatial Cognition (ISCS 2012) in Rome, Italy, on “Moving through vir­tual real­ity with­out moving”. Below is a video of the pre­sen­ta­tion for those who couldn’t make it to Rome 😉 The paper was pub­lished in Cognitive Processing as

Riecke, B. E., Sigurdarson, S., & Milne, A. P. (2012). Moving Through Virtual Reality Without Moving? Cognitive Processing, 13(1), 293–297. doi:10.1007/s10339-012‑0491–7 (Download)

The short paper enti­tled “Self-Motion Illusions (Vection) in VR – Are They Good For Anything?” that we pre­sented ear­lier this year at the IEEE VR con­fer­ence was not only accepted (with a 9.5% accep­tance rate for short papers) but also received an hon­or­able men­tion to be amongst the best  short papers! We are honored!

Below is a video of the presentation:

In essence, this is prob­a­bly the first study to really show that self-motion illu­sions (“vec­tion”) are not only cool, but can actu­ally enhance user’s behav­ior in VR by facil­i­tat­ing per­spec­tive switches that are oth­er­wise difficult.

A paper dis­cussing Sonic Cradle’s the­o­ret­i­cal under­pin­nings, includ­ing our psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­work of immer­sion and 15 iter­a­tive co-design ses­sions was not only accepted, but awarded an hon­ourable men­tion at this year’s ACM con­fer­ence on Designing Interactive Systems.  The con­fer­ence had an accep­tance rate just under 20%, and the award puts our paper in the top 2.5% of almost 500 sub­mis­sions.  We are honoured!

The paper is called “Sonic Cradle: Designing for an Immersive Experience of Meditation by Connecting Respiration to Music” and here’s a short descrip­tion from the con­fer­ence pro­gram where we’re part of a ses­sion called “In The Moment”:

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Could an inter­ac­tive system trig­ger the psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion? We are pur­su­ing an answer to this ques­tion through a sys­tem­atic “research through design” approach which explores a psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­work of media “immer­sion”. Our approach has gen­er­ated Sonic Cradle: an inter­ac­tive system aimed at com­bin­ing sen­sory depri­va­tion, res­pi­ra­tory biofeed­back and music into a medi­ated expe­ri­ence of mind­ful­ness.
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I will present the paper in Newcastle in June — hope to see y’all there!

Here’s a record­ing of the final 5-min stu­dent project pre­sen­ta­tions from a course that Bernhard was teach­ing in Spring 2012 at SIAT, enti­tled “Cognition, Learning, and Collaboration, and the Craft of Research and Writing for Publication (IAT812)”. Enjoy!

Earlier this month, Salvar Sigurdarson had his first ever con­fer­ence talk at the IEEE Virtual Reality con­fer­ence in Santa Ana, California. There, he pre­sented a paper he authored, called “Can phys­i­cal motions pre­vent dis­ori­en­ta­tion in nat­u­ral­is­tic VR?” It went pretty well.

We recorded his talk for pos­ter­ity, so you can check it out here:

I’m quite excited and hon­oured (and did I men­tion ner­vous?) about the oppor­tu­nity to give a short TEDyou pre­sen­ta­tion at TEDactive 2012 in Palm Springs! Title will be “Moving you in and through vir­tual real­ity”. After that I’ll def­i­nitely need to relax in the Sonic Cradle — get it ready Jay.

one of the demos shown during my TEDactive talk:

You con­trol the Virtual Reality sim­u­lated motion by simply lean­ing into the direc­tion of intended travel.

Jay Vidyarthi  and Bernhard Riecke will be demon­strat­ing the Sonic Cradle at TEDactive 2012 in Palm Springs!

It’s going to be a jam packed week, but we will try to keep the system up and run­ning for as long as pos­si­ble.  Come visit us and take a few min­utes to pacify your mind and solid­ify the inspi­ra­tion you’re sure to get from this year’s ever-fantastic TED talks.

Interested in con­tribut­ing to world-class research at the inter­sec­tion of Informatics, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Human Factors/HCI, and Virtual Reality in an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary multi-national team? We’re cur­rently look­ing for bright and moti­vated PhD/MSc stu­dents to join the iSpace lab at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University in the greater Vancouver region in beau­ti­ful British Columbia, Canada. See http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/contact/ for details.

The iSpace Crew recently gave three pre­sen­ta­tions at the SIAT research col­lo­quium, and we’d like to share them with you. Enjoy!

Bernhard Riecke is giving a brief intro to the iSpace lab & intro­duc­ing his students

Salvar Sigurdarson on “Can phys­i­cal motions pre­vent dis­ori­en­ta­tion in nat­u­ral­is­tic VR?”

Daniel Feuereissen on “Can Self-Motion Illusions facil­i­tate spa­tial Orientation?”

Jay Vidyarthi on “Are you immersed? Characterizing “immer­sion” across lit­er­a­ture, art, and inter­ac­tive media”

Below is a short intro video of the iSpace lab. Thanks Daniel for the video-editing!

We recently took a few pic­tures of the iSpace immer­sive video-projection setup with the Gyroxus motion chair as an input device: lean­ing into the direc­tion you want to move in the vir­tual envi­ro­ment con­trols the sim­u­lated motions. We used a Polhemus 6DOF track­ing system instead of the built-in track­ing for more pre­cise motion control.

Driving through a pro­ce­du­rally gen­er­ated vir­tual city using Gyroxus motion chair: 

The SFU-Surrey open house video was just released — it fea­tures the new iSpace sim­u­la­tor (at 1:48, thanks Andrew for the nice pitch!)

Below are some more pic­tures from the open house day — thanks to all who helped with it, it was a great success!

We are cur­rently run­ning exper­i­ments and look­ing for par­ti­ciants. If inter­ested, sign up on sfu-siat.sona-systems.com or con­tact one of the iSpace stu­dents Daniel, Salvar, Lonnie, or Andrew (see ispace.iat.sfu.ca/people/). Below is a short video of the iSpace VR sim­u­la­tor that’s used in some of the experiments:

Riecke, B. E. (2010). Compelling Self-Motion Through Virtual Environments Without Actual Self-Motion – Using Self-Motion Illusions (“Vection”) to Improve User Experience in VR. In Virtual Reality (pp. 161 — 188). InTech: Available here

In a series of videos cre­ated by Simon Fraser University’s Teaching and Learning Centre, eigh­teen Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT) pro­fes­sors talk about the focus of their research, their cur­rent projects, and what excites them about teach­ing. The videos show­case the broad spec­trum of excit­ing research uniquely found in this one new Faculty. The pro­fes­sors share thought-provoking and con­tem­po­rary ideas that per­vade FCAT, demon­strat­ing the cre­ative mix of pro­grams that both chal­lenge and com­ple­ment one another, spawn­ing new and inter­est­ing dis­cov­er­ies amongst stu­dents and faculty.

Prof. Bernhard Riecke on his research inter­ests and vision:

Playlist: Click here to watch all the videos