II-NEW: Living Lab for Asynchronous and Synchronous Investigation of Virtual and Real Environments

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

This project develops a computing research infrastructure in The Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology at Virginia Tech that will support research and exploration at the boundaries of science, engineering, art, and design. The infrastructure will enable novel research in the areas of ambient environments, ubiquitous computing, and mirror worlds. The infrastructure will create a environment for researchers, educators, students, and the general public to interact both physically and virtually with other people, live performances, and interactive exhibitions within the same venue and also remote venues. The project will incorporate real-time physical interaction with ambient sensor data acquisition and processing, and provide a unique research environment for investigating the relationship between a real environment and a corresponding virtual representation. This infrastructure will enable research across many domains including the study of security, crowd modeling, human-computer interaction, gaming environments, and behavioral modeling including models of affect change. Intellectual Merit With the participation of researchers from Computer Science, Communications, the Arts, and Technology, the proposed infrastructure will be used to investigate five research domains: (1) Parallels between behavior in real spaces and virtual spaces. (2) The effects of fidelity in virtual environments on performance in physical environments, such as to examine navigation in a real building after training at different levels of rendering and styles of navigation through a virtual space. (3) Crowd model evaluation, especially the evaluation of socially-aware crowd behavior, social interaction, and sub-group behavior in a complex social setting such as before a musical performance or during an art exhibition. (4) The relationship between behavior and affect in a public venue, which will be studied using a combination of data pre-processing, visualization, and clustering. (5) Computational models of energy-efficient buildings, to reduce the variance and uncertainly associated with a building?s occupancy to meet the challenges in designing an effective and efficient HVAC control system. Broader Impact The infrastructure will enhance education by creating a novel computational research platform for investigating human behavior, emotions, and activities in a university environment. The project will advance science while promoting teaching, training, and learning by providing unique cross-disciplinary learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. The project brings together computer scientists, architects, and humanities researchers to address the interaction of between real and virtual worlds. The project will increase opportunities for a diverse study body to participate in, learn about, and be recruited into science and engineering by integrating topics from many different fields including the visual and performing arts, architecture, and the humanities. The project will have lasting benefits to society through its exploration of distance learning, human experience, and social interaction.