Very proud of my thesis student Maties Claesen, who has been nominated for the EOS thesis award! His work, “ZeroTraining: Extending Zero-Gravity Objects Simulation in Virtual Reality Using Robotics,” combines virtual reality and robotics to simulate weightless objects more realistically – crucial for astronaut training and space exploration. Maties demonstrated some impressive creative problem-solving skills, especially in combining diverse fields to tackle complex challenges with limited hardware resources.

Special thanks to Andreas Treuer, Martial Costantini, and Lionel Ferra at ESA for their support, valuable insights and feedback on this work. Andreas was particularly instrumental for this work by sharing his experiences and providing feedback throughout the project which was crucial in refining both the scope as well as the implementation of this work.

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Paper accepted for ISMAR 2024: The Art of Timing in AR Guidance

We are excited to announce that our paper titled “The Art of Timing: Effects of AR Guidance Timing on Speed Control” (with Jeroen Ceyssens, Bram van Deurzen, Gustavo Rovelo Ruiz and Fabian Di Fiore) has been accepted for presentation at the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR).

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) holds significant potential to facilitate users in executing manual tasks. For effective support, however, we need to understand how showing movement instructions in AR affects how well people can follow those movements in real life. In this paper, we examine the degree to which users can synchronize the speed of their movements with speed cues presented through an AR environment. Specifically, we investigate the effects of timing in AR visual guidance. We assess performance using a highly realistic Mixed Reality (MR) welding simulation. Welding is a task that requires very precise timing and control over hand and arm motion. Our results show that upfront visual guidance (before manual task execution) alone often fails to transfer the knowledge of intended speeds, especially at higher target speeds. Live guidance during manual task execution provides more accurate speed results but typically requires a higher overshoot at the start. Optimal outcomes occur when visual guidance appears upfront and continues during the activity for users to follow through.

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Two papers accepted: one for ISMAR 2023 on AR guidance for Line Tracing, and one for SCF 2023.

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