Project Morpheus: Bringing VR to the Living Room

Jed Ashforth - Senior Game Designer, WWS Immersive Technology Group, Sony Computer Entertainment  

With Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4, Sony Computer Entertainment has a unique opportunity to bring Virtual Reality into living rooms world-wide. As the senior game designer for Project Morpheus, Jed Ashforth has spent several years exploring the exciting new gameplay paradigms that virtual reality represents. Tearing up the existing rule books and rebooting game design are the first steps in preparing a console development community focused on traditional gaming to take this journey with us.

In this presentation, Jed discusses many unique advantages of Project Morpheus, and some of the fresh, diverse approaches we are taking to deliver the best possible PlayStation VR experience for our players.

Analysed Human – Capitalising on human capabilities and understanding constraints

Chair: Professor Elisabeth Hill – Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Brain interactive: The attention challenge

Professor Nilli Lavie – Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL

Attention affects all information processing from perception and awareness to learning, memory and action. Consideration of attentional abilities and limitations is therefore critical for understanding and improving brain-machine interaction. In this talk I discuss the psychological and brain mechanisms of attention, outlining the fundamental principles as well as challenges of harnessing attention effectively.

Interactive Modelling of Biological Macromolecules

Professor Mike Sternberg – Director, Centre for Bioinformatics, Imperial College London

This talk will describe the power of interactive molecular graphics for modelling biological macromolecules, especially proteins. The complex inter-relationships between the structures, functions and dynamics of biomolecules require diverse visual representations. In my group,

Lawrence Kelley and co-workers have developed a web server, Phyre2, which allows a user to input the chemical formulae (the sequence) of a protein and predict its complex 3D structure.

There are over 80,000 users world-wide and we have had more than 4,000 citations to papers describing this resource. A recent development in molecular modelling is the use of crowd-sourced serious games to advance scientific understanding. In the US, a group has developed a community approach to predict protein structure.

Working together with Professors Latham and Leymarie from Goldsmiths and Ian Shaw, we are developing a game for users to dock two proteins of known structure into a complex. This game will be available on tablet and we are tackling challenges of developing professional touch gestures and visualisation for users familiar with the standards of computer games and apps.

i2 media research: applying psychology to unlock value in the commercial world

Professor Jonathan Freeman – Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Jonny will present a brief introduction to his team’s work applying both conscious and subconscious objective measures of human behaviour. He will showcase examples spanning READ MORE

Extended Human – Beyond traditional capacities: humans extend their reach to new realms

Chair: Professor Frederic Fol Leymarie – Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London

3D printable social robots

Limor Schweitzer – CEO, Robosavvy

3D printing is used to quickly fabricate parts of humanoid and other mobile robots used in research and entertainment and human-robot interaction. 3D printing allows time and cost savings for one-off robotic ideas, DIY and education. Off-the-shelf components and other fabrication tools are still needed to complete the robot but with 3D printers the creative process is faster and more fun.

Building a Symbiotic Human/Machine Orchestra

Professor Ajay Kapur - Associate Dean for Research and Development in Digital Arts & Director of Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design (MTIID), California Institute of the Arts

This talk introduces the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra, a mixed ensemble of human and robotic performers. A series of twenty robotic musical instruments have been designed and created to perform with an orchestra of contemporary electronic musicians. In the talk, we will describe the design and production of the robotic instruments, details on the visual and sonic aesthetics of the ensemble, technical considerations of the computer network employed in the performance, and information on an assortment of compositions in the current repertoire.

Distributed psychophysics

Dr. Parashkev Nachev - Institute of Neurology, UCL

Until recently, we could construct psychophysical models of human behaviour only with specialist, locally-deployable tools, applied to small, poorly sampled populations. This has adversely restricted the complexity of the modelling, and therefore the fidelity to the true
underlying behaviour. The advent of networked, commodified, personal hardware now opens the way to distributing such tools globally, on a scale that enables the complexity of modelling needed to stay faithful to human reality.

Creative Human – Blending human and machine creativity

Chair: Professor Robert Zimmer – Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London

Dual Universe

Dr. Jean-Christophe Baillie – CTO, Novaquark

Dual Universe is a single-shard sandbox MMO taking place on hundreds of planets, and focusing on massively emergent gameplay. Players are free to create their own economic or political systems, gather in organisations and explore the procedurally generated world for
resources and opportunities. Quite uniquely, players are also able to modify the voxel-based world: create cities, various scriptable constructs like vehicles, space ships or giant orbital stations. All players share the same gigantic “single shard” universe: there is only one reality, giving birth to emergent organisations and player specialisation around activities like building, politics, security, pirating, space colonisation and exploration, logistics, harvesting, manufacturing or industry production. Dual is a game where we will see civilisations rise and fall, empires and alliances unite or compete, in a totally free open world where everything will be possible.

Data as Design Tool

Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink – Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London

Typically, computer science treats “data” as measurements of the world that can be modeled, aiding in prediction or understanding of some phenomenon. My work instead examines the use of data as a human interface—a way for people to communicate embodied knowledge, READ MORE