As an ADAPT funded PhD researcher you will have access to a network of 85 global experts and the opportunity to collaborate with over 250 staff as well as a wide multi-disciplinary ecosystem across 8 leading Irish universities. We can influence and inform your work, share our networks and collaborate with you to increase your impact, and accelerate your career opportunities. Specifically we offer:
Virtual characters have been central components to digital applications such as movies and games for many years. More recently, interaction with these characters has provided increased engagement and opportunities for immersion for players in a social context. Today, Augmented and Virtual Reality applications provide a space for embodied interaction; players/users can be represented by a virtual avatar, and exchanges become more engaging. There is general agreement that plausible avatars play a key role in creating VR environments that allow the user to feel high levels of immersion and social presence. However, the requirements of real-time dynamic interactions pose a serious challenge for developers; trying to capture and relay detailed (rich) and reasonably accurate information about one user and their environment to other remote users and vice versa presents a number of complications. Particularly challenging are scenarios where precise movement/interactions are required e.g., communication gestures where turn taking and gesture synchronization is desired, or physical interactions for example playing sport or throwing an object between players.
Under the supervision of Dr Cathy Ennis & Prof John Diliginana, you will aim to contribute to the work on virtual embodiment of multiple users in multi-modal AR/VR scenarios (considering audio as a factor), determining how to do this efficiently, with affordable devices in real-time. You will learn a number of key skills in Augmented and Virtual Reality environment development, working with motion capture and combining multi-sensory signals in a number of different scenarios. In addition you will also conduct perceptual experiments to guide this development, enhancing your skills in that domain.
This project is multidisciplinary in nature, and there will be potential for collaboration with experts in other areas of academia. The application of results from this project will be of interest to industry partners also including social media and game developers.
Information inquiries can be sent to: cathy.ennis@adaptcentre.ie
As part of your application you will be required to submit
ADAPT is committed to achieving better diversity and gender representation at all levels of the organisation, across leadership, academic, operations, research staff and studentship levels. ADAPT is committed to the continued development of employment policies, procedures and practices that promote gender equality. On that basis we encourage and welcome talented people from all backgrounds to join ADAPT.