Publications

December 15, 2019

IEEE Transactions on Haptics

We present experimental results that demonstrate that rendering haptic cues with multi-sensory components—specifically, lateral skin stretch, radial squeeze, and vibrotactile stimuli—improved perceptual distinguishability in comparison to similar cues with all-vibrotactile components. These results support the incorporation of diverse stimuli, both vibrotactile and non-vibrotactile, for applications requiring large haptic cue sets.

Areas: AR/VR

December 1, 2019

IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (TASLP)

In this paper, a new method for pre-processing HRTFs in order to reduce their effective order is presented. The method uses phase-correction based on ear alignment, by exploiting the dual-centering nature of HRTF measurements. In contrast to time-alignment, the phase-correction is performed parametrically, making it more robust to measurement noise. The SH order reduction and ensuing interpolation errors due to sparse sampling were analyzed for these two methods.

Areas: AR/VR

November 18, 2019

ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia

Foveated rendering and compression can save computations by reducing the image quality in the peripheral vision. However, this can cause noticeable artifacts in the periphery, or, if done conservatively, would provide only modest savings. In this work, we explore a novel foveated reconstruction method that employs the recent advances in generative adversarial neural networks.

Areas: AR/VR Machine Learning

November 10, 2019

SIGGRAPH Asia

Designing a fully integrated 360◦ video camera supporting 6DoF head motion parallax requires overcoming many technical hurdles, including camera placement, optical design, sensor resolution, system calibration, real-time video capture, depth reconstruction, and real-time novel view synthesis. While there is a large body of work describing various system components, such as multi-view depth estimation, our paper is the first to describe a complete, reproducible system that considers the challenges arising when designing, building, and deploying a full end-to-end 6DoF video camera and playback environment.

Areas: AR/VR Computer Vision

November 9, 2019

Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)

In immersive virtual reality (VR) environments, experiences of harassment can be exacerbated by features such as synchronous voice chat, heightened feelings of presence and embodiment, and avatar movements that can feel like violations of personal space (such as simulated touching or grabbing). Simultaneously, efforts to govern these developing spaces are made more complex by the distributed landscape of virtual reality applications and the dynamic nature of local community norms. To better understand this nascent social and psychological environment, we interviewed VR users (n=25) about their experiences with harassment, abuse, and discomfort in social VR.

Areas: AR/VR Human Computer Interaction & UX

October 29, 2019

International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)

We present a 16.2 million frame (50 hour) multimodal dataset of two-person face-to-face spontaneous conversations. Our dataset features synchronized body and finger motion as well as audio data. To the best of our knowledge, it represents the largest motion capture and audio dataset of natural conversations to date.

Areas: AR/VR Computer Vision Machine Learning

October 28, 2019

International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)

We present DenseRaC, a novel end-to-end framework for jointly estimating 3D human pose and body shape from a monocular RGB image. Our two-step framework takes the body pixel-to-surface correspondence map (i.e., IUV map) as proxy representation and then performs estimation of parameterized human pose and shape.

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

October 28, 2019

Journal of Vision

Scientists and engineers have created computations and made measurements that characterize the first steps of seeing. ISETBio software integrates such computations and data into an open-source software package. The initial ISETBio implementations modeled image formation (physiological optics) for planar or distant scenes. The ISET3d software described here extends that implementation, simulating image formation for three-dimensional scenes.

Areas: AR/VR

October 27, 2019

International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)

We present Habitat, a platform for research in embodied artificial intelligence (AI). Habitat enables training embodied agents (virtual robots) in highly efficient photorealistic 3D simulation.

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

September 19, 2019

Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP)

In this study, we analyze the performance, user preference, and sense of ownership for eight virtual grasping visualizations. Six are classified as either a tracked hand visualization or an outer hand visualization. The tracked hand visualizations are those that allow the virtual hand to enter the object being grasped, whereas the outer hand visualizations do not, thereby simulating a realistic interaction.

Areas: AR/VR