IMMERSE Weekly Seminar Series

Location: SC 2405 (Map)  

Welcome back to Spring semester! This will be a time to meet up as an IMMERSE community and plan out opportunities to share work in the coming weeks. Bring a laptop or mobile device to contribute to the planning process. 

Location: SC 2405 (Map)  

Zoom: https://illinois.zoom.us/j/84618547089?pwd=jdSVMexpdAnoIQv0bSYMnoasLbMViI.1

ILLIXR: An End-to-End Systems Research Approach to Enable the Era of Immersive Computing

Immersive computing (including virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality) has the potential to transform most industries and human activities. Delivering on this potential, however, requires bridging an orders of magnitude gap between the power, performance, and quality-of-experience attributes of current and desirable immersive systems. With a number of conflicting requirements - 100s of milliwatts of power, milliseconds of latency, unbounded compute to realize realistic sensory experiences – no silver bullet is available.  Further, the true goodness metric of such systems must measure the subjective human experience within the immersive application. The ILLIXR research group is engaged in an integrative research agenda developing codesigned end-to-end systems from hardware to system software stacks to AI models spanning the end-user device/edge/cloud, with metrics that reflect the immersive human experience, in the context of real immersive applications. Central to our work is ILLIXR (Illinois Extended Reality testbed), an open-source end-to-end XR system and research testbed, to democratize immersive systems research.  In this talk, members of the ILLIXR group will describe the ILLIXR testbed and our research providing orders of magnitude higher efficiency and new functionality for XR systems.

Location: SC 2405 (Map)

RAISe Lab - Enhancing Human-Robot Collaboration in Construction Through Immersive and Intelligent User Interfaces

The construction industry is experiencing a transformative shift with the adoption of advanced technologies to address its long-standing challenges, such as safety risks, stagnant productivity, and labor shortages. Among these advancements, robotic systems are emerging as valuable tools to assist human workers in demanding construction tasks. However, the dynamic and unpredictable nature of construction sites necessitates seamless human-robot collaboration to ensure both safety and operational efficiency. This seminar explores how emerging technologies, including immersive environments, artificial intelligence (AI), and wearable sensing, can bridge the gap between humans and robots on construction sites. These technologies can provide a safe and controlled setting to simulate real-world scenarios, enabling workers to test and refine collaborative workflows, build confidence, and optimize performance before working in complex, real-life environments. A key focus of the presented research is the introduction of an adaptive immersive interface that tailors to the unique needs of each user. As such, the seminar highlights the potential of these next-generation tools to improve communication, enhance safety, and foster trust in human-robot collaboration in construction.

Location: SC 2405 (Map)  

Physics Outreach and Instruction through New Technologies (POINT): Using Virtual Reality to Visualize and Teach Gravity

Abstract:

Understanding the nature of gravity, especially in the context of general relativity and its possible extensions or modifications, presents a significant challenge due to the abstract and multi-dimensional nature of spacetime. The Physics Outreach and Instruction through New Technologies (POINT) project leverages virtual reality (VR) as an interactive tool for both research and education. This talk will provide an overview of three key aspects of POINT: (1) the development of VR simulations that visualize gravitational wave polarizations beyond general relativity, (2) an education research study evaluating the effectiveness of immersive learning for improving conceptual understanding of curved spacetime, and (3) the integration of these tools into outreach efforts within the local community. By collaborating with researchers in physics, computer science, and education, POINT aims to make complex physics concepts more accessible and engaging for students and the general public.

Kristen Schumacher is a graduate student in theoretical astrophysics, studying gravitational waves to test general relativity and explore modified theories of gravity. As an NSF Fellow, she used visualization tools and virtual reality to make astrophysics more accessible. She will be starting a postdoc at UT Austin in the fall.

Refreshments Provided. This seminar will be streamed and recorded via Zoom, please check the IMMERSE newsletter announcement for details.

Location: SC 2405 (Map)  

The UX of VR

Location: SC 2405 (Map)