Invited Talks

Biography: Suzanne Weghorst is a Senior Research Scientist and Research Director at the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab). She holds advanced degrees in both computer science (University of Washington) and experimental psychology (University of California, Riverside), and has focused her attention in recent years on novel approaches to human-computer interaction. Her work at the HIT Lab has included research on situation awareness in virtual environments, augmented reality technologies, assistive devices for people with disabilities, surgical simulation systems, and advanced human interfaces for medicine and molecular biology. Weghorst is active in the medical VR research community, serving as program advisor for several medical VR conferences and as co-editor of the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference proceedings. Weghorst and her colleagues at the HIT Lab were recipients of the 2001 Satava Award for their contributions to medical interface technology.

Title:
Augmenting Tangible Molecular Models

Abstract:
Structural molecular biology forms the foundation of our understanding of life as a molecular process. The chemical structures of biological molecules and the nature of their physical interactions in the processes of life are the result of billions of years of evolution, and are thus highly complex at multiple levels of scale. Physical aids such as ball-and-stick models have long been used in teaching basic chemistry and structural molecular biology. Advanced automated fabrication technologies now allow the rapid production of physical models of more complex molecular structures, and concurrent advances in human interface and computing technologies are affording new ways of using these tangible molecular models. In this multi-institutional collaborative project we are exploring novel methods for prototyping complex molecules, such as proteins, and are creating tools for multi-modality enhancement of such tangible models by superimposing 3D graphical (augmented reality) information over the fabricated physical models, by incorporating support for voice commands and aural display of information, and by providing haptic (force display) interaction with molecular data. This approach provides a uniquely integrated tool for research and learning in molecular biology.

Biography: Hyun S. Yang is currently a professor in the Department of Computer Science at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). He received a BS degree in electronics engineering from Seoul National University, Korea, in 1976. And he received MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1983 and 1986 respectively. He was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of IOWA from 1986 to 1988 as an assistant professor. Since 1988, he has been with the Department of Computer Science at KAIST as a professor. His research interests include computer vision, robotics, mixed reality, multimedia, media art, image processing, brain science and artificial intelligence.

Title:
Wearable Telepresence with Humanoid and Mixed Reality

Abstract:
Mixed reality is the technology of seamlessly combining cyber space and physical space. This technology is possible through the use of head-mounted see through displays where the userfs real-world view can be overlaid with virtual objects. The more advanced form of this system is the wearable computer. It becomes a base of enhancing the mixed reality technology. Mixed reality coupled with the wearable computer gives new possibility to us. In this paper, we first describe two wearable computing systems, the IWAS (intelligent wearable assistance system) and the wearable telepresence system, which are developed in our laboratory. IWAS is for supporting human activities and the wearable telepresence system is for multimodal communication with humanoid robot. We then briefly overview our researches on mixed reality. We describe the IAL (interactive artificial life) system in virtual environment.. We also introduce our network-based realistic virtual reality system (AIMNET) and a method of reconstructing dynamic scene based on visual hull and view morphing.