This is Marina Oikawa, PhD student (D3) at IMD Lab.

I, Igor Almeida (D2) and Prof. Kato participated in XIV Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality (SVR2012) in Niteroi (RJ), Brazil from May 28th-31st. The event was held at Mercure Hotel, which has a nice view of the Guanabara Bay and from where you can also see the Sugar-loaf Mountain and the Christ Redeemer’s Statue, the two main touristic attractions of Rio de Janeiro.

I, Prof. Kato and Igor

Guanabara Bay view

Mercure Hotel

On the first day of the conference, there was a keynote talk by Assoc. Prof. Aditi Majumder, from University of California. The main topic of her talk was about new degrees of freedom to next generation displays and cameras. The rest of the day was filled with the technical session.

Keynote Speaker, Assoc. Prof. Aditi Majumder

Audience during the technical session

On the second day, the conference was held in a different place: Petrobras, the largest company in Brazil in the oil industry. We visited the Petrobras’ Research Center (Cenpes) and two technical sessions were held inside the installations of the company, including the one in which Igor presented his work:

Igor de Souza Almeida, Marina A. Oikawa, Jordi Carres Polo, Jun Miyazaki, Mark Billinghurst, Hirokazu Kato: “AR-based video-mediated communication“.

Petrobras auditorium

Igor's presentation

The demos we could see in the research center were basically related to virtual reality simulations for training, oil extraction and other simulations made to attend specific needs of the company.

Visiting CENPES

Trying some demos

On the last day of the conference, Researcher Prof. Albert Rizzo, from University of Southern California, gave a keynote about Clinical Virtual Reality, focusing on VR systems that targets clinical assessment, treatment rehabilitation and resilience.

Prof. Albert Rizzo

I presented my paper in the last technical session:

Marina A. Oikawa, Takafumi Taketomi, Goshiro Yamamoto, Makoto Fujisawa, Toshiyuki Amano, Jun Miyazaki, Hirokazu Kato: “Local quadrics surface approximation for real-time tracking of textureless 3D rigid curved objects“.

which got the Best Paper Award.

Receiving the Best Paper Award

Picture with the organizers of the conference

Another paper getting an award in this conference was: Human Body Motion and Gestures Recognition Based on Checkpoints, by Thiago Chaves, Lucas Figueiredo, Alana Da Gama, Cristiano Araújo, Veronica Teichrieb, from Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE).

Overall, I think it was a nice opportunity for us to exchange some ideas with other Brazilian researchers (the main public in the conference), have an idea of research institutes and companies in Brazil working in the AR/VR field and also get our work known by them.

During our stay in RJ, we also visited two Laboratories: VISGRAF, at IMPA (Instituto Nacional de Matematica Pura e Aplicada) and Tecgraf at PUC – RJ (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro). Both have researches related to Computer Graphics, Computer Vision and AR/VR technologies. We had the chance to discuss our researches with the Professors in these institutes and get some nice feedback from them.

At VISGRAF, talking to Prof. Luiz Velho

PUC-RJ, where Tecgraf is located

Walking around Niteroi and Rio de Janeiro

The conference was held in a city called Niteroi,which is connected to the city of Rio de Janeiro by a 13.29km bridge. It is also possible to reach the city by ferry.

In Niteroi, we visited the Contemporary Art Museum (MAC), designed by a famous Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer. It was located just 200 meters from the conference site.

Contemporary Art Museum (MAC)

View from inside the museum

We also visited one of the most famous touristic points in RJ: the Christ Redeemer’s Statue.  It is located at the peak of the 700-metre Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park, overlooking the city.

View from the top

The Christ Redeemer’s Statue

After this sightseeing time, we had a very nice dinner at a Japanese restaurant, called Yume. Igor was the one suggesting this restaurant because Madonna had been there some years ago when she visited Brazil. Nice recommendation! 😉

Igor, Prof. Kato and I

Our dinner

Most of the pictures I used in this post were taken by us, but some of them were taken by the organizers of the event. They made it available in this link.

This is G. Yamamoto.

Now, two assistant professors, Uranishi-sensei and Yamamoto, have been in Oulu as visiting research professors. Our visiting is funded by Young Researcher Overseas Visits Program for Vitalizing Brain Circulation.

From 2nd to 4th June, professor Kato had visited in Oulu and we discussed on our works. I wrote about this event as below. Most of photos were taken by Kato-sensei.

[2nd June:Arriving in Oulu]
After arriving, Kato-sensei said “looks winter!”. Because he came to Oulu (around 10 degree Celsius) from Rio de Janeiro (around 26 degree Celsius).

At airport of Oulu

At first, we went to a Hotel where Kato-sensei would stay. Then, we went to a finnish cooking restaurant, Sokeri-Jussin, for dinner. Ordered finnish traditional cookings, salmon soup and roasted reindeer, were quite good for us. We enjoyed this dinner with white wine.

Roasted reindeer tongue

Salmon soup

At the restaurant

Kato-sensei, thank you for your treat to us.

Although it was about 9 p.m. when we left the restaurant, it looked like 5 or 6 p.m. brightness of japanese summer season. This is one of experiences which will be gotten in only north regions.

[3rd June: Sightseeing, and dinner with professor Pulli]
We started shopping and sightseeing from afternoon. Firstly, we went to department store, Stockmann, to look for souvenirs. Also we looked some expensive interiors and checked how japanese industrial equipments would have been placed in the shop. On the whole, most of korean televisions have been wider and cheaper than japanese ones in the same price level.

After shopping, we went to see the fat police man statue, Toripolliisi, which might be symbol for Oulu, and sea.

With Toripolliisi

Market place

City hall

Cathedral

The dinner was held at italy restaurant, Toscana, where professor Pulli had reserved for us. The participants were professor Pulli, Zeeshan who is a researcher, Kato-sensei, Uranishi-sensei, and Yamamoto. As shown in following photos, these meals looked nice and had enough volume to make us full. In this day, we also enjoyed dinner and talk. Thank you so much, professor Pulli.

Toscana

Appetizers

Main

Enjoying the dinner

Cafe au lait

[4th June: Visiting at laboratory]
It was the final day when Kato-sensei had stayed in Oulu. We had prepared the research discussion plan as such a following schedule. Kato-sensei had joined the discussion for 5 hours, then pointed some problems out and gave various advices to us. Thank you, again.

1. Zeeshan: Presentation, “Smart kitchen overview”
2. Uranishi-sensei: Demonstration, “Technology in Smart kitchen”
3. Yamamoto: Short introduction, “Laser-based smart navi technology for outside use”
(break)
4. Future cooperation & activities planning between University of Oulu and NAIST

In university of Oulu, the group to which professor Pulli belongs has been promoting VESC project. The project’s objective is to develop and analyse those smart services which have potential to support the senior citizens in their daily life. NAIST visitors are joining this project and developing parts of some systems from a viewpoint of technologies mainly: Smart kitchen, smart navigation, smart shopping for seniors, etc.

Kato-sensei, thank you for your visiting.

At airport of Oulu

This is Angie Chen, M1 student at IMD Lab.

We had open campus last weekend and demonstrated our researches to visitors.

Here I would like to share with you and show some pictures I took that day.

welcome sign outside the demo room!

This is Katayama-san and Kubo-san who were at the first floor to introduce our lab.

(Jaakko was there as well, but he’s about to guide a person to our lab, so wasn’t in the photo. Sorry.)

The view from the entrance. We had many students and visitors that day.

Kimura-san was explaining PhotoMosaic (フォトモザイク).

Zoomable AR system presented by Okada-san

Terawaki-san was introducing the system to a foreign visitor.

Magic Light introduced by Zhang-san and Ozawa-san.

Magic book presented by Kim-san!

And this is Keyaki-san introducing his system.

(Sorry that couldn’t show you all the photos because of the space.)

Many questions were asked and discussed that day.

Some students even  brought their proposal asking for comment.

It’s glad to see people are interested in our researches.

Over all, it was a great experience for me since I haven’t joined open campus before.

If you have a chance, please come and visit us and/or join us. 🙂

Best.