Talk: How to Build a Holodeck (Watch)

Abstract: In the age of COVID-19 it is more clear than ever that there is a compelling need for better remote collaboration. Fortunately a number of technologies are starting to converge which will allow us to take such collaborations to a whole new level. Imagine that when you join an on-line meeting you are present with your entire body, and that you can see and hear other people as though you are all in the same room.

There are many challenges to realizing this vision properly. The NYU Future Reality Lab and its collaborators are working on many of them. This talk will give an overview of many of the key areas of research, including how to guarantee universal accessibility, user privacy and rights management, low latency networking, design and construction of shared virtual worlds, correct rendering of spatial audio, biometric sensing, and a radical rethinking of user interface design.

Bio: Ken Perlin, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, directs the Future Reality Lab, and is a participating faculty member at NYU MAGNET. His research interests include future reality, computer graphics and animation, user interfaces and education. He is chief scientist at Parallux, Tactonic Technologies and Autotoon. He is an advisor for High Fidelity and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in feature films and television, as well as membership in the ACM/SIGGRAPH Academy, the 2020 New York Visual Effects Society Empire Award the 2008 ACM/SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, the TrapCode award for achievement in computer graphics research, the NYC Mayor's award for excellence in Science and Technology and the Sokol award for outstanding Science faculty at NYU, and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Centre for Digital Media at GNWC. Previously he served on the program committee of the AAAS, was external examiner for the Interactive Digital Media program at Trinity College, general chair of the UIST2010 conference, directed the NYU Center for Advanced Technology and Games for Learning Institute, and has been a featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from NYU, and a B.A. in theoretical mathematics from Harvard. Before working at NYU he was Head of Software Development at R/GREENBERG Associates in New York, NY. Prior to that he was the System Architect for computer generated animation at MAGI, where he worked on TRON.