A few bugs in the coding of our hosted resources have been fixed. Previously there was an unintended upper limit on the number of dictionary terms each article could link directly to. This has now been amended.

Latest Term: VHAR

VHAR is short form for Visuo-Haptic Augmented Reality. This branch of AR deals with multi-modal human perception in space by tying the sense of touch into the sense of sight with virtual objects overlaid into physical space. Basically, it deals with ways of making it so that a user can feel simulated pressure, texture or weight on their fingertips (or anywhere else on their body) when they go to touch a virtual object displayed through mixed or augmented reality. Sometimes also known as VHMR.

See Also: Visuo-Haptic, Haptic, Augmented Reality

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VHMR

Visuo Haptic Augmented Reality

Visuo-Haptic Mixed Reality

Embodied Avatars >> Bina 48: The Gynoid
(added 01/08/2010)
Unlike most interaction gynoids, Bina is not a full body robot. Instead, she is basically a head, shoulders, and small external compressor. Currently residing at the Terasem Movement Foundation in Bristol, Vermont, she's one of the most sophisticated facial expression gynoids of 2010.


Embodied Avatars >> Geminoid H1: The Android
(added 01/08/2010)
In 2006, Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory of Osaka University, Japan, developed Geminoid H1, the first actroid android, or as the comic and film have pressed into the public consciousness, the first surrogate.


Displays >> The Omni-focus
(added 11/07/2010)
The omni-focus is a camera system with the ability to function much like the human eye - capturing objects in its field of vision regardless of the distance, in perfect focus. It even adapts an algorithm from VR, in order to do so.


Legal >> Do in WoW as You would in RL
(added 08/07/2010)
A couple of days ago, Blizzard, the parent company to World of Warcraft, stunned many people with a privacy-related announcement. They were making changes to the forums, and from an unspecified date in the near future, they will require all forum posters to have their real first and last names, together with all character names, on display on every post they make.


VR & Crime >> 360 degree Full Motion Video Panoramas
(added 22/06/2010)
The ISIS panoramic camera offers many new possibilities for security - and also for the use and applications of panoramic VR systems.


Artificial Intelligence >> AI Cars, Driving Like Hooligans
(added 13/05/2010)
Stanford's Junior AI, on handbrake skid parking, without a human influence on the system, in dynamic environments, with only a two foot variance in position at 25mph. Or, the first baby steps towards dynamic switching between open and closed loop systems.

Embodied Avatars >> Futureworld
(added 16/04/2010)
Futureworld is the sequel to Westworld, yet it takes an entirely different direction. Meant to be the film that spun the Westworld franchise into an anthology set, instead it was the film that buried it. Futureworld has some great ideas, and like many films of the era, is a goldmine of nuggets concerning robotic technology, virtual reality, augmented reality and social implications.


Pure Research >> Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos
(added 25/03/2010)
Programming the Universe is a Simulation Argument book. Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program.


Pure Research >> Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information
(added 25/03/2010)
Decoding Reality is very much a Simulation Argument book. In its pages, physicist Vlatko Vedral argues that we should regard the entire universe as a gigantic quantum computer.


Teaching and Training via VR >> Women and Gaming: The Sims and 21st Century Learning
(added 21/02/2010)
Video games have become both big business and a technological focal point for new forms of learning. Today games are not just played; players engage in game design, write fan fiction, and organise themselves into collaborative learning communities. In these communities players acquire 21st century skills in technology, but, in the best of these communities, they hone these technical skills and strengthen emotional and social intelligence.