MetaSpace II: Object and full-body tracking for interaction and navigation in social VR

MetaSpace II (MS2) is a social Virtual Reality (VR) system where multiple users can not only see and hear but also interact with each other, grasp and manipulate objects, walk around in space, and get tactile feedback. MS2 allows walking in physical space by tracking each user's skeleton in real-time and allows users to feel by employing passive haptics i.e., when users touch or manipulate an object in the virtual world, they simultaneously also touch or manipulate a corresponding object in the physical world. To enable these elements in VR, MS2 creates a correspondence in spatial layout and object placement by building the virtual world on top of a 3D scan of the real world. Through the association between the real and virtual world, users are able to walk freely while wearing a head-mounted device, avoid obstacles like walls and furniture, and interact with people and objects. Most current virtual reality (VR) environments are designed for a single user experience where interactions with virtual objects are mediated by hand-held input devices or hand gestures. Additionally, users are only shown a representation of their hands in VR floating in front of the camera as seen from a first person perspective. We believe, representing each user as a full-body avatar that is controlled by natural movements of the person in the real world (see Figure 1d), can greatly enhance believability and a user's sense immersion in VR.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. Video: http://living.media.mit.edu/projects/metaspace-ii

The effects of tool container location on user performance in graphical user interfaces

A common way of organizing Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers (WIMP) interfaces is to group tools into tool containers, providing one visual representation. Common tool containers include toolbars and menus, as well as more complex tool containers, like Microsoft Office’s Ribbon, Toolglasses, and marking menus. The location of tool containers has been studied extensively in the past using Fitts’s Law, which governs selection time; however, selection time is only one aspect of user performance. In this thesis, I show that tool container location affects other aspects of user performance, specifically attention and awareness. The problem investigated in this thesis is that designers lack an understanding of the effects of tool container location on two important user performance factors: attention and group awareness. My solution is to provide an initial understanding of the effects of tool container location on these factors. In solving this problem, I developed a taxonomy of tool container location, and carried out two research studies. The two research studies investigated tool container location in two contexts: single-user performance with desktop interfaces, and group performance in tabletop interfaces. Through the two studies, I was able to show that tool container location does affect attention and group awareness, and to provide new recommendations for interface designers

Multi-Touch

The main contribution in this project is first, by optimize the multi-touch simulation to demonstrate the multi input abilities and proceed with hardware implementation which will be in the second stage of this project, Final Year Project (FYP) II

Adapting Multi-touch Systems to Capitalise on Different Display Shapes

The use of multi-touch interaction has become more widespread. With this increase of use, the change in input technique has prompted developers to reconsider other elements of typical computer design such as the shape of the display. There is an emerging need for software to be capable of functioning correctly with different display shapes. This research asked: ‘What must be considered when designing multi-touch software for use on different shaped displays?’ The results of two structured literature surveys highlighted the lack of support for multi-touch software to utilise more than one display shape. From a prototype system, observations on the issues of using different display shapes were made. An evaluation framework to judge potential solutions to these issues in multi-touch software was produced and employed. Solutions highlighted as being suitable were implemented into existing multi-touch software. A structured evaluation was then used to determine the success of the design and implementation of the solutions. The hypothesis of the evaluation stated that the implemented solutions would allow the applications to be used with a range of different display shapes in such a way that did not leave visual content items unfit for purpose. The majority of the results conformed to this hypothesis despite minor deviations from the designs of solutions being discovered in the implementation. This work highlights how developers, when producing multi-touch software intended for more than one display shape, must consider the issue of visual content items being occluded. Developers must produce, or identify, solutions to resolve this issue which conform to the criteria outlined in this research. This research shows that it is possible for multi-touch software to be made display shape independent

Hand Occlusion on a Multi-Touch Tabletop

International audienceWe examine the shape of hand and forearm occlusion on a multi-touch table for different touch contact types and tasks. Individuals have characteristic occlusion shapes, but with commonalities across tasks, postures, and handedness. Based on this, we create templates for designers to justify occlusion-related decisions and we propose geometric models capturing the shape of occlusion. A model using diffused illumination captures performed well when augmented with a forearm rectangle, as did a modified circle and rectangle model with ellipse "fingers" suitable when only X-Y contact positions are available. Finally, we describe the corpus of detailed multi-touch input data we generated which is available to the community

Image Understanding and Robotics Research at Columbia University

The research investigations of the Vision/Robotics Laboratory at Columbia University reflect the diversity of interests of its four faculty members, two staff programmers and 15 Ph.D. students. Several of the projects involve either a visiting computer science post-doc, other faculty members in the department or the university, or researchers at AT&T Bell Laboratories or Philips laboratories. We list below a summary of our interest and results, together with the principal researchers associated with them. Since it is difficult to separate those aspects of robotic research that are purely visual from those that are vision-like (for example, tactile sensing) or vision-related (for example, integrated vision-robotic systems), we have listed all robotic research that is not purely manipulative