Publications
We are excited to share our works and discuss them with users, businesses, researchers, data experts, etc., to develop a better immersive world for data-driven innovation.
Getting Involved
Conferences
DORM 2023: IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking and Applications (MetaCom 2023)
26 -28, Jun., 2023 | Koyoto, Japan
We presented a paper titled “What happens in the avatar stays in the avatar ” at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking and Application held in Kyoto, Japan, from the 26th to 28th of June, 2023. The paper was published in IEEE Xplore on the 6th of October, 2023.
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ABSTRACT
In virtual spaces, the amount of information that can be collected from an avatar is orders of magnitude higher than the information we can collect from watching and tracking a human being today. The Metaverse, a network of 3D immersive worlds, poses ethical challenges to its participants, among which data privacy protection emerges as paramount. This paper advocates for virtual reality platforms to seriously consider agency and autonomy as pillars of the future abilities of avatars populating their spaces and negotiation mechanisms for allowing users to express the type and amount of data the platform can collect from a user’s avatar. The basic principle is that lacking clear protocols that protect the user, what happens in the avatar must stay in the avatar. ( Beltran & White, 2023)
FTC 2022
Future Technologies Conference 2022
20-21 Oct., 2022 | Hybrid Event | Vancouver, Canada
We attended the conference to discuss our latest study and ideas on Extended Reality, Data Visualization, and Immersive Analytics and demonstrate our engine – Aroaro.
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Click here to watch the keynote presentations and interviews from 2022
IEEE VR 2022
The 29th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces
12 – 16 Mar., 2022
We attended the conference to demonstrate our engine – Aroaro. Our research demonstration interests the broad XR community and will be presentable in a conference setting, exhibiting new and innovative work.
For more information, click here.
ITU KALEIDOSCOPE 2021
Connecting Physical and Virtual Worlds
6-10 Dec., 2021
Kaleidoscope 2021 – Connecting physical and virtual worlds was the thirteenth in a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences organised by ITU to bring together various views from universities, industry and research institutions. The aim of the Kaleidoscope conferences is to identify emerging developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and, in particular, areas in need of international standards to aid the sustainable development of our interconnected world.
For more information, click here.
Getting Involved
Papers
Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems Book Series (LNNS, volume 560)
Look at, Look into and Look Around: A New Approach to Visualizing Network Data and Increasing the Quality of Decisions
Publisher: Springer, 13 Oct, 2022
Fernando Beltrán & Jing Geng
Abstract
Business decision-makers are increasingly exposed to using, processing, and analyzing huge amounts of data, and such exposure has resulted in data interpretation problems as data are generated at higher rates and with finer accuracy. One such data type, a network data set, is the subject of the present work. Network data sets present some challenges to data visualization, which are unknown to the visualization of tabular data sets. The visualization feature complements purely analytical tools for longstanding and new problems in network data analysis. This paper describes an innovative solution to seeing data, interpreting network data, and using network data for improved decision-making in business. The core of our work is designing, building and testing a mixed-reality environment capable of retrieving data from any given data set and displaying them in a navigable, distributed, virtual environment that will provide an immersive visually sensory experience of the data. The environment allows the interaction of several decision-makers and uses a mix of Virtual and Augmented Reality (XR) technologies.
2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)
Aroaro – A Tool for Distributed Immersive Mixed Reality Visualization
Publisher: IEEE
Fernando Beltrán; David White; Jing Geng
Abstract
In this research demo, we present three immersive scenarios on
three XR modalities – VR, immersive AR on HoloLens and 2D
AR on Android. These scenarios are a network of Harry Potter
characters in VR, a map-based visualization of a soldier’s history
with rich attributes, including images and sound on HoloLens and
a visualization of car racing on Android. These visualizations
have been created with Aroaro, our distributed mixed reality data
visualization tool.
Keywords: Augmented reality, Virtual reality, Mixed reality,
Data Visualization, Immersive Analytics, Multi-user Networks.
iTU KALEIDOSCOPE 2021
Building a Distributed XR Immersive Environment for data Visualization
Publisher: IEEE
Fernando Beltrán; Jing Geng
Abstract
We present a novel way to support business organizations’ decision-making in the context of analysis of network data sets. For such a purpose we built a mixed-reality, multi-user platform, which we named Aroaro and can be deployed on different virtual reality and augmented reality devices. In Aroaro, users can experience data visualization, either individually or as part of a team. With a set of lab tasks designed to lead lab subjects to analyze the network information while immersing into the rich virtual environment, our approach belongs to the nascent area of immersive analytics. We assume a business unit has already procured some network data set and been tasked with problems that need to reveal information about the network’s connectivity properties. This paper is concerned with how a business unit achieves problem solving (decisionmaking) when relying on immersive analytics. Our approach combines a high-quality virtual environment such as Aroaro, its data visualization engine and the analytics afforded by concepts of network centrality in a network. We report on preliminary results of having lab subjects experience two visualization environments: a 3D visualization system on a 2D-flat screen and our mixed-reality, multi-user platform for network data visualization.