Special Session II : Virtual Realities, Art and New Entertainment

Organizer/Chair
Ryohei Nakatsu, Ph. D.
Professor, School of Science and Technology
Kwansei Gakuin University
2-1 Gauen, Sanda, 669-1337 Japan
Tel: +81 795 65 7670, Fax: +81 795 85 9077, E-mail: nakatsu@ksc.kwansei.ac.jp

Description of the proposed session:
Various kinds of research have been undertaken in the field of virtual realities (VR). Basic concept of virtual reality is to construct three-dimensional virtual world and to give people who are inside this virtual world the feeling of presence. By using VR technologies, it has been expected that people could virtually go to different countries and learn different cultures through their own experiences. Also it has been expected that people could even go to different planet or different time and learn astronomy or history through their own experience. Although various kinds of VR technologies have been studied and developed, however, VR has been adopted to only a few applications. This means that only a small effort has been done for the real applications of VR technologies.
We believe that entertainment is the most appropriate application area of VR. The basic concept of entertainment is to lead people into virtual world and give them totally difference experiences from their daily experiences. Also it is important to emphasize that entertainment is not only for pastime. Entertainment has been taking very important parts in our life by refreshing us and activating our creativity. Recently by the advancement of computers and networks, new types of entertainment have been emerging such as video games, entertainment robots, and network games. By applying VR technologies we can expect that more and more new entertainment will emerge. Also it is expected that various kinds of business and education applications would emerge starting from these new entertainment.
The goal of this topical session is to give the audience the information on the most advanced VR technologies and the possibilities of new entertainment utilizing these technologies. Also we expect that the lecturers would inform the audience of our future life and future societies these new entertainment would realize. Since our lectures have very different backgrounds and expertise, it is expected that the audience would grasp the whole trends in the area of VR and entertainment through the talk of the lecturers.

Lecture titles and lecturers
1. REALIZATION OF TAI-CHI MOTION USING A HUMANOID ROBOT - PHYSICAL INTERACTIONS WITH HUMANOID ROBOT-
Ryohei Nakatsu
Professor, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

2. CULTURAL COMPUTING :ZENetic COMPUTER
Naoko Tosa
Senior Researcher/Artist, Entertainment Computing Laboratory, Japan
Research Fellow, MIT CAVS

3. MIXED REALITY HUMAN MEDIA FOR SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL INTERACTION
Adrian David Cheok
Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore, Singapore

4. POSITIVE EFFECTS OF VR TECHNOLOGY ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Matthias Rauterberg
Professor, Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherland

5. MULTIMODALITY IN A DOMESTIC ENVIRONMENT
Henry Thomas
Researcher, France Telecom R&D, France

6. BODY ELECTRIC AND REALITY FEEDBACK LOOPS: VIRTUAL INTERACTIVE SPACE & ENTERTAINMENT POTENTIALS
Anthony Lewis-Brooks
Associate Professor/Artist, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark

Organizer’s Biography
Ryohei Nakatsu received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from Kyoto University in 1969, 1971 and 1982 respectively. After joining NTT in 1971, he mainly worked on speech recognition technology. In 1994, he joined ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute) as the president of ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories. From the spring of 2002 he is a professor at School of Science and Technology, Kwansei Gakuin University. At the same time he established a venture company, Nirvana Technology Inc., and became a president of the company.
His research interests includes emotion extraction from speech and facial images, emotion recognition, nonverbal communications, and integration of multi modalities in communications.
In 1978, he received Young Engineer Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Japan (IEICE-J). In 1996, the best paper award from the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia. In 1999, 2000 and 2001, Telecom System Award from Telecommunication System Foundation and the best paper award from Virtual Reality Society of Japan. In 2000, the best paper award from Artificial Intelligence Society of Japan.
He is a fellow of the IEEE and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Japan (IEICE-J), a member of the Acoustical Society of Japan, Information Processing Society of Japan, and Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence.