SIGGRAPH 2013 E-Tech | Mobile: Arabic

AGATHE's objective is to provide therapists with an innovative means of dealing with cognitive rehabilitation and to offer patients customized rehabilitation sessions that simulate activities of daily living.

Interactions with computers have expanded into the physical world. Recent developments of low-cost gesture-tracking technologies, like the Microsoft Kinect, have enabled millions of users to interact with their computers by gesturing with their bodies. Furthermore, computer-vision tracking and registration techniques now enable novel projection-based displays to overlay projected images into our physical environments, creating entirely new augmented-reality experiences. These natural interfaces will continue to be incorporated into mobile devices, where they will enable rich interactive experiences anywhere, anytime.

Interactions with computers have expanded into the physical world. Recent developments of low-cost gesture-tracking technologies, like the Microsoft Kinect, have enabled millions of users to interact with their computers by gesturing with their bodies. Furthermore, computer-vision tracking and registration techniques now enable novel projection-based displays to overlay projected images into our physical environments, creating entirely new augmented-reality experiences. These natural interfaces will continue to be incorporated into mobile devices, where they will enable rich interactive experiences anywhere, anytime.

AquaTop Display is a projection system that uses white water as a screen surface. By using a depth camera to detect fingers on and over the water surface, the system allows users to interact with projected images by gestures such as protruding fingers out from under the water surface and scooping up the water with both hands. When users "float" on the water surface, they can fuse their bodies with the displayed objects for further augmented interaction by "becoming one" with the screen. These types of interactions are not possible with current impenetrable, rigid-body, flat surfaces.

Psychophysical studies from as far back as the mid-1800s document a curious fact about human vision: while in our minds we perceive the world clearly all around us, at any given moment we only see sharply within a few degrees of the direction we're looking. That tiny foveal region is roughly the size of your thumbnail with your arm fully extended. In spite of this known phenomenon, computer graphics systems have traditionally rendered the entire screen at uniform resolution. This is extremely wasteful of rendering resources in the periphery, where the higher resolution is not even perceptible. It also results in lower quality where the user is directly looking, because there are fewer resources left for rendering there. This system demonstrates that by concentrating rendering resources at the viewer's gaze position, and by carefully lowering the resolution in the periphery, higher quality can be achieved with an order-of-magnitude reduction in rendering costs. With the emergence of commodity eye-tracking technology, foveated rendering can enable more detailed display, at higher resolutions and larger field of view, with lighter weight, cheaper, and less power-hungry hardware.

In a user study designed to evaluate the quality of the simulated movement and its impact on the quality of the video-viewing experience, participants reported that the simulated motion was consistent with their real-world experiences, and they reported a sensation of self-motion. SIGGRAPH 2013 attendees are invited to experience four videos enhanced by haptic effects of motion: a horse ride, a rollercoaster ride, a spaceship flight, and a 4D movie.

IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept system that augments the area surrounding a television with projected visualizations to enhance traditional gaming experiences. It demonstrates how projected visualizations in the periphery can negate, include, or augment the existing physical environment and complement the content displayed on the television screen. The system can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new physical gaming experiences.

Incendiary Reflection aims to create computer-generated emotion by allowing users to recognize pseudo-generated facial expressions as changes to their own facial expressions. The approach manipulates emotional states through feedback of deformed facial expressions (artificial smiley faces and artificial sad faces) in real time. A user study showed that the system can change emotional states.

Transient imaging is a recent imaging modality in which short pulses of light are observed ''in flight'' as they propagate through a scene. Transient images are useful for understanding light propagation in complex environments, for analyzing light transport for research, and in many practical applications (for example, reconstruction of occluded geometry - ''looking around a corner'' - or measuring surface reflectance.

Transient imaging is a recent imaging modality in which short pulses of light are observed ''in flight'' as they propagate through a scene. Transient images are useful for understanding light propagation in complex environments, for analyzing light transport for research, and in many practical applications (for example, reconstruction of occluded geometry - ''looking around a corner'' - or measuring surface reflectance.