IMMERSIVE MULTIMEDIA

Immersive telecommunication technologies are typically used for

capturing, processing, analyzing, transmitting, and enabling the
remote fruition of objects, environments, and bioentities.
Applications of immersive telecommunication technologies may
span over a very wide range from industrial automation, health
care, education to entertainment.
Over the past two decades, the joint work of networking and the
multimedia has led to a wide range of tools and supports,
enabling the commercial world-wide deployment of multimediabased services and products. All the related research and
standardization activities enabled multimedia data to be adapted
to different networking technologies, wired and wireless,
established and emerging, with different and time-varying
channel conditions. Also, the restrictions due to the terminal
processing power of handheld devices are on the way to be
successfully overcome.
On the other hand, computer graphics, computer vision, and
virtual/augmented reality communities have often developed
conceptual models and tools working separately, mainly for
fulfilling local and specific needs of predefined contexts. For
instance, computer vision has often aimed at performing specific
tasks (e.g., tracking, object recognition) in some specific
scenarios (e.g., providing localization and visualization for robotic
application or video surveillance). Computer graphics has
developed a set of tools, such as rendering and texturing, which
have been mainly applied to animation and games and, more in
general, in the entertainment industry, mainly aiming to a local
use, though forms of remote collaborative environment (such as
3D gaming) are starting to take off the ground. Similar
approaches have been followed so far by virtual/augmented
reality research community

Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology which allows interacting with a 3D computer-simulated

environment as if it was real, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an
imaginary world.
A computer simulation, or a computational model, is a computer program, which attempts to
simulate an abstract model of a particular system. Computer simulations have become a useful
part of many natural systems from physics, biology, to human systems in economics, psychology,
and social science, as well as in the process of engineering new systems in order to gain insight
into their behaviour.
Presence is a theoretical concept describing the effect that people experience when they interact
with a computer-mediated or computer-generated environment (Sheridan, 1994). Lombard and
Ditton (1997) described presence as "an illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated".
In particular the Virtual Reality group conducts research in the following areas:

Serious Games, or Game-based Learning

Agent Based Modelling ( e.g. pedestrian, intelligent traffic systems, social systems,
computational biology)

Presence in Virtual Environments

Believable Characters and Social Synthetic Interactions, Synthetic Models of Personality

and Emotion

Interactive Creative Media

The above picture shows a young

businessman navigating in virtual reality interface such as
advertising his companys products to customers.

Haptic virtual reality tools developed to train

and certify surgeons

By Dag G.
15 July 2010

Since most of the procedures in modern surgery are performed with

remote controlled tools that can be inserted into the body using only
small incisions, laparoscopic surgery skips the need for large incisions
and, in turn, usually results in shorter recovery times for patients. An
interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, is developing a touch-sensitive virtual reality simulator that
will standardize how surgeons are trained and certified to perform
laparoscopic procedures.
The new virtual reality simulator will assess test-takers objectively
against board-certified standards and criteria, possibly over the Internet.
The new system is also expected to be more cost effective, with a lower
price point that should lead to a wider availability across the USA.

REFERENCES:

http://www.123rf.com/photo_9056595_young-businessmannavigating-in-virtual-reality-interface-future-collection-one-of-aseries.html