The University of Colorado Boulder's Counseling and Psychiatric Services office is using the technology to treat students facing anxiety, depression and phobias - such as fear of heights, flying, public speaking or insects.
"Virtual reality allows us to fully immerse students in environments that would otherwise be difficult," said CU Boulder Counseling and Psychiatric Services Director Monica Ng.
This new treatment has been very limited on college campuses until now but Ng says the exposure therapy is an evidence-based treatment to address anxiety and phobias.
Walk through the doors of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City these days and it’s possible to travel back more than 100 years.
Visitors can walk up to the original front doors no longer easily visible from outside the museum on East 36th Street, view a hidden staircase in its book-lined library that ascends to its upper tiers, and even meet Belle da Costa Greene, who died in 1950, having been the longtime librarian of the museum’s collector, J. Pierpont Morgan, and the museum’s first director, appointed by Morgan’s son in 1924.
Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library & Museum, said he loved that the museum’s new A.R. tour lets visitors “actually decode” the early 20th century decorative ceiling in its library by the muralist Henry Siddons Mowbray and get a close-up look at the 16th century tapestry over its grand fireplace.
Mr. Bailey said there was “no way” the Morgan could provide a written explanation of this decoration that visitors could read while simultaneously looking at it. The A.R. tour, he added, “is a wonderful way of imparting information about the history of the room, what the symbols mean.”
Referring to the museum’s entire A.R. experience, which makes 12 stops in the original, early 20th century library building, he added, “Nothing impedes the visual pleasure of stepping into these spaces.”
Austin Free-Net is offering a community train-the-trainer session on Wednesday, March 27 at the Carver Branch of Austin Public Library (Meeting Room #1) from 6:30-8 PM about using VR equipment in digital inclusion.
Virtual reality is a new frontier for digital inclusion, with great potential to engage people of all ages, abilities, and walks of life in the world of technology. To encourage creativity and co-creation, the City of Austin has established a lending library of VR equipment that community organizations can borrow.
This community training session will introduce the VR equipment in the City of Austin’s lending library and Austin Public’s lending library (Merge VR Goggles and Cube, Oculus Go, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, and Samsung Gear 360 camera), including procedures for borrowing the equipment, how to set it up, and how to facilitate exploration and education for a variety of audiences.
Speaking to reporters at CERN, the physics research center outside Geneva where he invented the web, Berners-Lee said users of the web had found it “not so pretty” recently.
“They are all stepping back, suddenly horrified after the Trump and Brexit elections, realizing that this web thing that they thought was that cool is actually not necessarily serving humanity very well,” he said.
“It’s our journey from digital adolescence to a more mature, responsible and inclusive future”.
But he was optimistic because of a strong resolve among governments to avoid balkanization of the Internet, and a strong resolve among people in social networks who had - surprisingly - been shocked at people trying to hack elections.
President Trump signed an executive order last month to launch the US government’s AI strategy, called the American AI Initiative. Kratsios, who is also the government’s deputy chief technology officer, has been the driving force behind White House strategy on AI. The American AI Initiative calls for more funding and will make data and computing resources available to AI researchers.
But many of the algorithms now considered AI were developed many years ago, and they are fundamentally limited. “We are harvesting the intellectual fruit that was planted decades ago,” says John Everett, deputy director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office. “That’s why we’re looking at far forward challenges—challenges that might not come to fruition for a decade.”
Through its AI Next program, DARPA has launched nine major research projects meant to tackle those limitations. They include a major effort to teach AI programs common sense, a weakness that often causes today’s systems to fail. Giving AI a broader understanding of the world—something that humans take for granted—could eventually make personal assistants more helpful and easier to chat with, and it could help robots navigate unfamiliar environments.
Another DARPA project will seek to develop AI programs that learn using less data. Training data is the lifeblood of machine learning, and algorithms that can ingest more of it can leap ahead of the competition. An innovation in this area could knock out a key advantage of tech companies operating in China, for example, which thrive on their access to an abundance of data. Other projects being funded focus on designing more efficient AI chips; exploring ways to explain the decision-making of opaque machine-learning tools; and making AI programs more secure.
How do you see it fitting into the larger AR/VR ecosystem?
Whilst the broadcast market is currently our most important market, it’s clear that cross-reality content, particularly augmented reality (AR), will permeate all market segments in the long run.
We, therefore, needed to create a solution that would address the requirements of other market segments as well, including corporate, industrial, medical, educational, digital marketing, and events.
Consequently, Pixotope has been specifically designed to be simple to use, really fast to design with, it connects to third-party products easily for added functionality, and it outputs graphics content of the highest possible quality today …even at 4K, and later in 2019, HDR too.
The Future Group will showcase Pixotope during the upcoming 2019 NAB Show in stand SU12702.
Though Motor Imagery (MI) stroke rehabilitation effectively promotes neural reorganization, current therapeutic methods are immeasurable and their repetitiveness can be demotivating. In this work, a real-time electroencephalogram (EEG) based MI-BCI (Brain Computer Interface) system with a virtual reality (VR) game as a motivational feedback has been developed for stroke rehabilitation. If the subject successfully hits one of the targets, it explodes and thus providing feedback on a successfully imagined and virtually executed movement of hands or feet. Novel classification algorithms with deep learning (DL) and convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture with a unique trial onset detection technique was used. Our classifiers performed better than the previous architectures on datasets from PhysioNet offline database. It provided fine classification in the real-time game setting using a 0.5 second 16 channel input for the CNN architectures. Ten participants reported the training to be interesting, fun and immersive. "It is a bit weird, because it feels like it would be my hands", was one of the comments from a test person. The VR system induced a slight discomfort and a moderate effort for MI activations was reported. We conclude that MI-BCI-VR systems with classifiers based on DL for real-time game applications should be considered for motivating MI stroke rehabilitation.
We don't need more technology, we need someone to find a true use for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Apple is just the firm to do it —since it's done the same thing twice before.
In a note to investors on Friday, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple will start producing its AR headset as soon as the fourth quarter of 2019. Kuo cautioned, however, that mass production could slip to the second quarter of 2020, if development doesn’t go as planned, according to Apple-tracking site 9to5Mac, which obtained a copy of the note.
According to Kuo, Apple’s AR glasses will rely on the iPhone to power the features and will not act independently. Android users, then, will either need to buy an iPhone to use Apple’s device or find an alternative.
High Fidelity this week announced the launch of Multi-Con VR, a comic con-style online VR event featuring contests, cosplay, fan art, celebrity panelists, and a slew of other exciting happenings.
The highlight of this event however, will be yet another Avatar Cosplay Contest. This time around, High Fidelity is taking their cut-throat competition even further with a grand prize of $10,000 USD for first place. Second place isn’t anything to scoff at either, with the runner-up taking home a respectable $5,000. Third place will earn themselves a solid $1,000, the same amount as FUTVRE LANDS first place winnings. There’s even a generous participation award of $300for every competing avatar.
A prizes will be paid in High Fidelity Coin, which can be cashed out and exchanged for standard US currency.
Contestants looking to take home gold will first need to impress the competitions panel of judges, composed of the build team from the Emmy-nominated television show, MythBusters.
Multi-Con will take place across three separate dates, each of which featuring their own unique topic. March 16th will revolve around anime/animation and the Avatar Cosplay Contest.April 27thwill revolve around fantasy and sci-fi, and June 8th will be reserved specifically for comic book lovers.
Multi-Con is a free event, however you will need to apply for the avatar contest here before being considered for competition.
At GDC 2019 later this month, Valve’s Principal Experimental Psychologist, Mike Ambinder will present the latest research pertaining to brain-computer interfaces—using signals from the brain as computer input. Ambinder says that BCI is still “speculative technology,” but could play an important role in the way players interact with the games of the future.
As time moves forward, the means by which users interact with computers have becoming increasingly natural.
While we’re far, far away from anything like direct brain I/O, there has been some headway made in recent years at least on the input side—’brain reading’, if you will. And while early, there’s exciting potential for the technology to transform the way we interact with computers, and how computers interact (and react) to us.
At GDC 2019 later this month in San Francisco, Valve’s Principal Experimental Psychologist, Mike Ambinder, will present an overview of recent BCI research with an eye toward its applicability to gaming. The session, titled Brain-Computer Interfaces: One Possible Future for How We Play, will take place on Friday, March 22nd.
Walk through the doors of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City these days and it’s possible to travel back more than 100 years.
We don't need more technology, we need someone to find a true use for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Apple is just the firm to do it —since it's done the same thing twice before.