Publications

January 1, 2020

Ethics in Design and Communication

Virtual Reality (VR) designers accept the ethical responsibilities of removing a user’s entire world and superseding it with a fabricated reality. These unique immersive design challenges are intensified when virtual experiences become public and socially-driven. As female VR designers in 2018, we see an opportunity to fold the language of consent into the design practice of virtual reality—as a means to design safe, accessible, virtual spaces.

Publication will be made available in 2020.

Areas: AR/VR Human Computer Interaction & UX

August 12, 2019

International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)

Many automated processes such as auto-piloting rely on a good semantic segmentation as a critical component. To speed up performance, it is common to downsample the input frame. However, this comes at the cost of missed small objects and reduced accuracy at semantic boundaries. To address this problem, we propose a new content-adaptive downsampling technique that learns to favor sampling locations near semantic boundaries of target classes.

Areas: AR/VR Computer Vision Facebook AI Research

July 31, 2019

SIGGRAPH

To overcome memory limitations of voxel-based representations, we learn a dynamic irregular grid structure implemented with a warp field during ray-marching. This structure greatly improves the apparent resolution and reduces grid-like artifacts and jagged motion. Finally, we demonstrate how to incorporate surface-based representations into our volumetric-learning framework for applications where the highest resolution is required, using facial performance capture as a case in point.

Areas: AR/VR Computer Vision Machine Learning

July 12, 2019

World Haptics

In this study, we examined the contributions of kinesthetic and skin stretch cues, in isolation and together, to the static perception of weight. In two psychophysical experiments, we asked participants either to detect on which hand a weight was presented or to compare between two weight cues. Two closed-loop controlled haptic devices were used to present weights with a precision of 0.05g to an end-effector held in a pinch grasp.

Areas: AR/VR

July 12, 2019

SIGGRAPH

In this work, we present a bidirectional system that can animate avatar heads of both users’ full likeness using consumer-friendly headset mounted cameras (HMC). There are two main challenges in doing this: unaccommodating camera views and the image-to-avatar domain gap. We address both challenges by leveraging constraints imposed by multiview geometry to establish precise image-to-avatar correspondence, which are then used to learn an end-to-end model for real-time tracking.

Areas: AR/VR Computer Vision Facebook AI Research Machine Learning

July 12, 2019

IEEE World Haptics Conference

A key challenge in haptic engineering is to design methods for stimulating the skin – a continuous medium with infinitely many degrees of freedom – via practical devices with few degrees of freedom. Here, we show how to use a single actuator to generate tactile stimuli with dynamically controlled spatial extent

Areas: AR/VR

July 12, 2019

World Haptics

In this work, we present Tasbi, a multisensory haptic wristband capable of delivering squeeze and vibrotactile feedback. The device features a novel mechanism for generating evenly distributed and purely normal squeeze forces around the wrist. Our approach ensures that Tasbi’s six radially spaced vibrotactors maintain position and exhibit consistent skin coupling.

Areas: AR/VR

July 12, 2019

IEEE World Haptics Conference

In this paper we define language and definitions to define the renderable set of dynamics that a general kinesthetic haptic display can render to a human operator.

Areas: AR/VR Human Computer Interaction & UX

July 12, 2019

IEEE World Haptics Conference

Hybrid actuation approaches for haptic interfaces generally suffer from asymmetry in active and passive torque capabilities. This paper describes the design of a high-performance balanced hybrid haptic device, which addresses the asymmetry by combining a high-power, low-impedance active compliant actuation (series-elastic actuator) with energy absorbing high-force passive actuation in parallel with a fast, low-power secondary active actuation.

Areas: AR/VR Human Computer Interaction & UX

July 12, 2019

IEEE World Haptics Conference

In this paper we present the design and control of Bellowband, a pneumatic wristband for localized pressure and vibration haptic feedback. The wristband has eight equally spaced pneumatic bellows that extend into the wrist, constructed from layers of polyester thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), resulting in a flexible, lightweight (11 g) band capable of rendering complex pressure and vibration cues to the user.

Areas: AR/VR Human Computer Interaction & UX