IMD (Interactive Media Design Laboratory) has a variety of state-of-the-art devices.
A new member has joined them.
Name: Apple Vision Pro
Of course, we will have more research and study sessions using this new tool in the future.
At first, the student experience started! Everyone had a great time.
We got this cool stuff from Xreal, Inc. as the part of “AR contents supporting program [JAP]”
Thank you for supporting our research.
This picture represents IMD Robot with AR glasses (box).
Hope to report to you all cool sub-research in the future.
Koudai Nieda won the Student Outstanding Interactive Presentation Award!
Awarding Organization/Academic Society: Human Communication Group, The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (HCG Symposium 2023)
Outline, purpose, and date of the conference/event
The HCG Symposium is an academic conference attended by researchers in fields closely related to human communication such as psychology, cognitive science, social science, physiology, and design studies, in addition to the engineering field.
Name of Award: Student Interactive Presentation Award
Date of Award: 12/13/2023
Awardees :
Kota Nieda, Taishi Sawabe, Masayuki Kanbara, Yuichiro Fujimoto, and Hirokazu Kato
Research theme
“Evaluation of the Reduction Effect of Pain Perception by “Talking and Stroking” Motion of a Robot”.
When caring for a patient, people perform a “talking and stroking” action that gives pleasant feelings to the patient. In recent years, advances in artificial intelligence and robotics technology have made it possible for people to interact with robots.
It has become clear that “talking and stroking” gives people more pleasant feelings than “talking” alone or “stroking” alone. The purpose of this study is to verify whether the “talking and stroking” behavior by the robot alters the perception of physical pain as well as psychological effects. The results of an evaluation experiment with 37 subjects showed that both “stroking” and “talking while stroking” were effective in reducing the perception of pain, and that “talking while stroking” had a greater psychological impact than “stroking. The results of the evaluation experiment with 37 subjects were both supportive of the results.
Comments on the Award
I am truly honored to receive this award. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the professors and students in my laboratory for their guidance, discussion, and cooperation. We will continue to make further efforts to reduce pain through robotics.
Hi everyone,
Nice to meet you, I’m M2 Soshiiro Ueda.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 was held in Sydney, Australia.
December in Australia was in the middle of summer, with temperatures exceeding 38 degrees Celsius on some days!
SIGGRAPH Asia is a conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive technologies, in which we participated as exhibitors.
We demonstrated for 3 days the “AR (Argument Reality) task support system” that we are currently researching.
Since researchers from from various fields attended at the exhibition, we were able to ask for feedback on the our demo and discuss the research we were doing.
We were able to get advice from various perspectives, which was very helpful and exciting.
I was very tired because I was on my feet for almost all of the three days, but it was a wonderful experience.
Next year’s SIGGRAPH Asia will be held in Tokyo. I am very much looking forward to it!
Hej, Hur mår du?
Jag heter Sawabe.
HAI (Human-Agent Interaction) 2023 was held in Gothenburg, Sweden.
IMD gave one oral presentation and two poster presentations.
It was cold and snowy in Sweden in December, but we had a lot of fun in discussions with various researchers at the venue.
The discussions with various researchers at the venue were very exciting.
I met Manuel (poster presenter), who used to come to IMD as an internship from Germany, after a long time,
(He came from Germany by plane to Sweden, but his flight was suddenly canceled due to heavy snow in Munich the day before.)
We talked about each other’s recent situation and our next research projects, etc. It was a very productive conference.
Since researchers from various countries were present at the local presentations, we were able to discuss the research we were doing
(especially when we expressed the nuances of Japanese in English).
We were also able to get advice from various perspectives, which was very helpful.
It was great to get advice from various perspectives.
(I am currently writing a paper at the airport in transit on my way home based on my findings here: ☺️😪)
Above: Gothenburg (Sweden) in the snow, it was so cold to the venue that I almost lost my ears (hat must).
Good luck for the next one!
Hi everyone! Nice to meet you, I’m M1 Nieda!
This time we had a lab camp at Taiko-ban Hanamu Hanamu in Yoshino, Nara Prefecture for two days on November 11 and 12.
I would like to introduce how the two days went!
M2 students presented their research and new members (Md Mustafizur Rahman, Tuwaemuesa Thapakorn, and intern Liu Jiayin) introduced themselves.
自己紹介の様子
In pairs, M1 students and PhD students challenged themselves to “create a demonstration of an interesting and fun idea” and gave presentations.
発表の様子
デモ展示の様子
It was a good opportunity for us to communicate with professors, doctoral students, international students, and other people with whom it is usually difficult to communicate.
During free time, we went sightseeing in Yoshino and enjoyed the vast nature, famous places, and local specialties.
I regret a little that we visited Yoshino just before the autumn leaves turned red….
Finally, we would like to hold the camp again next year.
See you again.
Prof. Kato received ISMAR 2023 Career Impact Award.
Congratulations, Prof.
・授賞団体/学会：The 22nd IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2023)
・学会・イベントの概要、主旨、開催日
IEEE ISMARは、拡張現実感（AR）、複合現実感（MR）、仮想現実感（VR）に関する最高峰の会議であり、学術界と産業界の両方から世界有数の研究者が集まります。
IEEE ISMAR is the premier conference for Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR), which attracts the world’s leading researchers from both academia and industry.
・受賞名： ISMAR 2023 Career Impact Award
・受賞日：2023/10/18
・受賞者 加藤博一 Hirokazu Karo
・受賞の概要
この度、加藤教授の長年にわたる研究が当該分野へ多大な影響を与えたことが評価され、Career Impact Awardが贈られました。
In recognition for the significant impact his lifelong research has had to the field of Augmented Reality
・受賞コメント 等
拡張現実感に関する研究に９８年から２５年間取り組んできましたが、このような形で評価いただき、光栄に思います。
短かったようにも感じますが、当時は実験システムの構築だけで一苦労だったのが、
今では誰もが持っているスマートフォンにその技術が搭載されており、技術の進化を実感できます。
拡張現実感技術の発展に少しは貢献できたことを嬉しく思います。
“I am very honored to receive this award.
I have been working on research on augmented reality for 25 years since 1998.
When I started this research, even building the experimental system was challenging.
However, this technology is now installed in the smartphones that everyone owns, and I can truly see the evolution of technology.
I’m glad that I was able to make a small contribution to the development of augmented reality technology.”
Hi this is Prof. Sawabe.
I attended HCII2023 and gave a presentation.
This was my first time attending HCII and my first time in Copenhagen, Denmark (the venue).
I arrived in Denmark after a 19-hour flight via Doha (transit).
What is this conference about?:
HCI INTERNATIONAL 2023 25TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION AC Bella Sky Hotel and Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
The parallel sessions were held from morning (around 8:00) to evening (around 18:00).
Of course, you can freely attend any session you like, so you can pick up only the presentations you are interested in.
Through the lectures I attended and the ones I presented, I found that various efforts are being made around the world on the topic of ICT for the elderly, and some of the services are actually being used by elderly users.
The content of my presentation was about the operation of a service that uses smartphone agents to listen to how people use their smartphones and their smartphone problems, but there are not many approaches using agents (characters) yet. (I felt that most research assumes that elderly users already have smartphones and use them normally. I think there is a big challenge here!)
Denmark itself is a very laid-back country, and the temperature outside was cool (about 20 degrees Celsius on average, while it was about 35 degrees Celsius in Japan at that time…). It was also cool (or cold) inside the hotel, so we had to buy clothes locally. The tax rate was so high that even a set of Mac🙆D cost about 2,000 yen (!!!!). The LEGO store was very crowded, as you would expect from the birthplace of LEGO.
A former IMD member, Mr. Daniel Eckhoff (currently at City University of Hong Kong, formerly at Universitat Oldenburg) visited us from Hong Kong (where he is currently working).
He gave a lecture on his research, which was a rare opportunity for M1 and M2 students to interact with outside researchers.
Daniel’s research is on pseudo-tactile sensation, and he presented his research on perception in the area of human touch and changing the appearance of hands (showing the effect of 🔥).
(Maybe I can be a real Ende⚪︎- (My Hero AOOOemia) in the future?)
I hope to see you in Hong Kong next time.
Nihao(你好), everybody!
I’m your friendly lab mate, Ma, from IMD Lab!
Glad to be writing my first blog post and getting to know all of you!
We had this OpenCampus event on May 13th, and our lab was lit up with many demos. So many curious minds dropped by for a look-see, thank you very much!
On the first floor, Akiyoshi, Noguchi, and Ueda were hustling, showing off our poster to the crowd.
We’ve sometimes had that heart-racing moment of talking to strangers, right? Yoneyama’s research might just be the key to soothe your nerves!
Ever been stuck in a speech without feedback, clueless about your performance? Takahama is on the case to tackle this problem!
Then there’s Akira, diving deep into object recognition in the environment. 2D recognition is a piece of cake, but 3D, especially with not-so-powerful devices like HMD, now that’s the real challenge. But Akira is trying his best to cover!
And like magic, with Geert’s research, your iPad or phone screen can become transparent! As your head position changes, so does your screen display!
Ever wondered if praise during gameplay pumps you up or is it the other way around? Taguchi’s demo focuses on utilizing conversation robots in gaming.
Noguchi’s research is pretty cool. Estimating a sprinter’s posture through a 3D camera provides an even more detailed basis for athletic training.
Soshiro and Matoba are developing a general-purpose AR work support system. Sure, the idea of AR aiding work is now mature, but creating such a system is tough as nails! With our system, you can swiftly whip up an AR work support system.
IMD is also into human-computer interaction research!
And guess what? We’ve got the only autonomous vehicle in NAIST. The biggest roadblock to the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles might not be technology, but psychology! Our goal is to reduce the psychological stress of passengers riding in highly autonomous vehicles, promote the adoption of autonomous vehicle technology, and enhance passenger comfort. Ma and Shimizu are in the garage, eager to share this research!
Up on the seventh floor, Nieda and Liu are introducing haptic robots. Paired with AR or VR systems, these robots can offer you an entirely different experience!
IMD Lab is brimming with exciting research topics. If you’re interested, we’d love to have you pop in!
Last but not least, big thanks to our intern Guo for snapping some awesome photos!
Did you have fun at the Open Campus?! We hope to see you around IMD again!