VAM-HRI 2020 Program
Session 1
Aug 10 | 8:10 AM EST
  • Intro and Logistics
    8:10 AM EST
  • Lightning Talks
    8:20 AM EST | 35 min
  • Toward Robot Teleoperation with Virtual Reality: Remote Scene Exploration and Object Grasping
    Bukeikhan Omarali, Kaspar Althoefer, Maurizio Valle and Ildar Farkhatdinov.
  • Robot Teleoperation through Virtual Reality Interfaces: Comparing Effects of Fixed and Moving Cameras
    Mehdi Sobhani, Mauel Giuliani, Alex Smith and Anthony Pipe.
  • Heuristic Evaluation Adaptation to Virtual Reality Systems for Visualisation of Robot Sensor Data in Nuclear Decommissioning
    Paul Bremner, Manuel Giuliani, Tony Pipe and Alan Winfield.
  • Towards an Immersive User Interface for Waypoint Navigation of Mobile Robots
    Gregory Baker, Tom Bridgwater, Paul Bremner and Manuel Giuliani.
  • Visuo-tactile AR for Enhanced Safety Awareness in Human-Robot Interaction
    Matti Krüger, Martin Weigel and Michael Gienger.
  • System for robotic manipulator programming in Mixed Reality
    Mikhail Ostanin, Stanislav Mikhel, Aleksei Evlampev, Valeria Skvortsova and Alexandr Klimchik.
  • Investigation of the Human-Robot Interaction in Affective Robotics Using HRI with apparent differences in VR/AR
    Taishi Sawabe, Suguru Honda, Yuichiro Fujimoto, Masayuki Kanbara and Hirokazu Kato.
  • Poster Session 1/2
    9:00 AM EST | 50 min

    Papers with lighting talks in the preceding session will be participating in this poster session.

  • Break
    10 min
  • Keynote Introduction to the Mixed Reality Toolkit
    10:00 AM EST | 30 min

    This session will be an introduction to Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK). MRTK capabilities, interaction concepts and my experience working as Software Engineer at Microsoft in the Mixed Reality organization will be discussed.

    Catherine graduated with a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2019. During her undergrad she worked as a research assistant for Dr. Daniel Szafir in the Interactive Robotics and Novel Technologies Lab (IRON Lab), specifically looking into depth perception in augmented reality. She also continued grow her experience in the AR industry with internships at Disney/ESPN, Apple and is now working full time at Microsoft as a Software Engineer on the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK).
    Catherine Diaz

    Microsoft Mixed Reality

    Home
  • Breakout Session
    10:30 AM EST | 30 min

    Interactive Q&A session with Catherine, the organizers, and the audience.

    • Session 2
    Aug 10 | 1:00 PM EST
  • Intro and Logistics
    1:00 PM EST
  • Keynote Teleoperating Mobile Manipulators with Virtual Reality
    1:10 PM EST | 60 min

    Teleoperating robots has the potential to enable remote humans to fix problems when they occur, to provide training data for training autonomous algorithms, and to enable robots to operate in dangerous places beyond the reach of humans such as underwater or space. However, existing teleoperation interfaces lack the dexterity of in-person teleoperation interfaces such as that used in the PR1 robot. We present work towards enabling robust remote teleoperation using virtual reality to create a virtual gantry interface. We then describe planned next steps to expand this interface to allow people to increase situational awareness, decrease latency, and incorporate more autonomy. Our goal is safe, effective and highly capable remote teleoperation of mobile-manipulator robots.

    Stefanie is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Brown University. The aim of her research program is to construct robots that seamlessly use natural language to communicate with humans. Robots that can communicate with people using language can respond appropriately to commands given by humans, ask questions when they are confused, and request help when they get stuck. Her work applies probabilistic methods, corpus-based training, and decision theory to develop interactive robotic systems that can understand and generate natural language. She was named one of IEEE Spectrum’s AI's 10 to Watch and won the Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award at Brown University.
    Stefanie Tellex

    Brown University

    Home H2R
  • Breakout Session 2/2
    2:10 PM EST | 30 min

    Interactive Q&A session with Stefanie, the organizers, and the audience.

  • Break
    10 min
  • Lightning Talks
    2:50 PM EST | 35 min
  • R.A.I.N. -- A Vision Calibration Tool using Augmented Reality
    Andre Cleaver, Elaine Short and Jivko Sinapov.
  • Implementing Virtual Reality for Teleoperation of a Humanoid Robot
    Jordan Allspaw, Gregory LeMasurier and Holly Yanco.
  • Tele-robotics via An Efficient Immersive Virtual Reality Architecture
    Nasif Zaman, Alireza Tavakkoli and Christos Papachristos.
  • Exploring Mixed Reality Robot Communication Under Different types of Mental Workload
    Nhan Tran, Kai Mizuno, Trevor Grant, Thao Phung, Leanne Hirshfield and Tom Williams.
  • Wait, I'm tagged?! Toward AR Project Aquaticus
    Nicholas Franck, Christa Chewar, Michael Novitzky and Christopher Korpela.
  • Tradeoffs Between Effectiveness and Social Perception When Using Mixed Reality to Supplement Gesturally Limited Robots
    Jared Hamilton, Nhan Tran and Tom Williams.
  • Exploring Interaction Design Considerations for Trustworthy Language-Capable Robotic Wheelchairs in Virtual Reality
    Nicholas Woodward, Teresa Nguyen, Lixiao Zhu, Carter Fowler, Taewoo Kim, Stacia Near, Stephen Thoemmes and Tom Williams.
  • Poster Session 2/2
    3:30 PM EST | 60 min

    Papers with lighting talks in the preceding session will be participating in this poster session.