The CougAR Lab has been working with Sugar Land Space Cowboys AAA baseball team, testing out the technology at the ballpark and seeing how we AR/VR could help with gameday fan experiences, allow them to see players up close in VR, and promote different suites and sections of the stadium. Students got the opportunity to visit Constellation Field, meet the players, take 3D scans of the park, and work with these assets to make AR Face Filters, VR rooms, and 360 degree tours. Our videos were played on the big scoreboard during Technology Day at the field, and Dr. Liao even got to throw out the first pitch!
The University of Houston Public Arts System possesses one of the largest collections of Precolombian Mesoamerican Artifacts in the world. Some of these Chupícuaro figurines are over 1000 years old, and researchers come from all over to study them. Because they are so rare, the general public has very limited opportunities to see these artifacts on display. The CougAR Lab, the UH-UX Lab, and the Object Lab have been working on a project to scan these figurines and create a Virtual Reality museum. The project is funded by the Cougar Initiative to Engage, and we are seeking additional funding from federal arts and humanities agencies to make this collection more accessible to the general public.
The CougAR Lab has been working with the Neuromodulation and Recovery Lab at Houston Methodist, directed by Dr. Dimitry Sayenko. They are focused on activity based therapies and recovery techniques for patients gaining sensorimotor function after spinal cord surgery and stimulation. Research assistants from the CougAR Lab have been visiting Methodist Hospital and designing custom VR games, applications, and interfaces that can help patients with their post surgical rehabilitation process.
The College of Education at UH trains thousands of teachers every year, and in doing so they have to prepare them for a list of core competencies that are set by state and federal agencies. One of these core competencies has to do with the ability to effectively design a classroom and create learning space that facilitates student activities and success. The CougAR Lab has been working with faculty in the College of Education and the Office of the Provost to create a 3D design program to help pre-service teachers construct their classroom layouts and see what they look like and walk through their designs in VR. This project has helped over 100 teachers improve on a core competency and see their own classrooms in VR, and has been presented at the Immersive Learning Research Network Conference and will be forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Instructional Design.
The CougAR Lab has been working with the UH Department of Physics on a VR program to teach them how to construct basic crystal lattice structures. This is something that can be difficult to understand conceptually, as many of these structures sit atop one another at different angles and combine to form more complex compounds. The current method of teaching these subjects is with marshmallows and popsicle sticks. The CougAR Lab created a tool for constructing and placing these structures in VR to see if students could use it to better understand this topic within physics. The novel program will be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR)
VR has many applications, and one of them is to extend what is possible with existing media into more immersive and 360 environments. Another feature of VR media is the ability to sync that with haptic feedback, such as gloves, vests, and suits. While there are many examples of VR media (e.g. movies, television, games, etc.), the use of haptic devices in the experience and enjoyment of these media has been less well understood. This project, created by CougAR Lab RA Sammy Tawakkol (PhD Candidate, Computer Science) focuses on the physical embodiment of a viewer to a character in films such as Baby Driver and Jaws through a bHaptics 40 point haptic suit and armbands. He is testing his build to see if users who watch the movie with the haptic suit felt more enjoyment, presence, and physical connection with the characters in the film.
Research leads in the CougAR Lab have been interested in how people interact with VR pets, and how people can feel empathy in these environments. Through an experiment where people play and take care of a VR pet, RA Afaf Asad investigates how people interact with VR animals, how they develop empathy for them through care, and whether gamifying the experience with points can affect how people feel toward these pets.
With new AI Augmented Reality avatars that people can have conversations with, there has been some interesting questions about how people will form relationships with embodied conversational agents. Replika is an application with millions of users who proclaim to be in deep relationships with their AI avatars, whether it is as a close friend or romantic partner. Research assistants in the lab have been interested in studying how people interact with Replika AR, how relationships develop across different stages, and some of the implications that embodied AI relationships can have for society.
AR chatbots can be crucial for e-commerce platforms. Many e-commerce platforms have chatbots, but the users/consumers are not that interactive with them because of their "robotic" features. The users/consumers feel limited by them as they do not always give proper answers or may take a long time to respond. In this video, Rubayet Hridi, UH Digital Media student, explains how the users/consumers can have a friendly interaction with the human-looking AR chatbots because the chatbot’s conversational style will be more like the humans. In there the users/consumers can ask any questions related to their purchasing and the chatbot will respond to them in a friendly casual tone. To do this project, Rubayet used Halo AR and Replika, and got some help from fellow classmates as well.
