Publications related to Real-time motion planning, navigation, and behavior for large crowds of virtual humans

Customizing the human-avatar mapping based on EEG error related potentials during avatar-based interaction

Olaf Blanke, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Ronan Boulic, Bruno Herbelin, Ricardo Andres Chavarriaga Lozano, Fumiaki Iwane, Thibault Serge Mario Porssut

Objective. A key challenge of virtual reality (VR) applications is to maintain a reliable human-avatar mapping. Users may lose the sense of controlling (sense of agency), owning (sense of body ownership), or being located (sense of self-location) inside th ...

2024

Advancing Self-Supervised Deep Learning for 3D Scene Understanding

Seyed Mohammad Mahdi Johari

Recent advancements in deep learning have revolutionized 3D computer vision, enabling the extraction of intricate 3D information from 2D images and video sequences. This thesis explores the application of deep learning in three crucial challenges of 3D com ...

EPFL2024

Changes in spatial self-consciousness elicit grid cell–like representation in the entorhinal cortex

Olaf Blanke, Emanuela De Falco, Baptiste Gauthier, Louis Philippe Albert, Hyeongdong Park, Hyukjun Moon, Corentin Marie Hervé Robert Tasu

Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex (EC) encode an individual’s location in space, integrating both environmental and multisensory bodily cues. Notably, body-derived signals are also primary signals for the sense of self. While studies have demonstrated th ...

2024

Towards Motion Forecasting with Real-World Perception Inputs: Are End-to-End Approaches Competitive?

Alexandre Massoud Alahi

Motion forecasting is crucial in enabling autonomous vehicles to anticipate the future trajectories of surrounding agents. To do so, it requires solving mapping, detection, tracking, and then forecasting problems, in a multi-step pipeline. In this complex ...

2024

SORI: A softness-rendering interface to unravel the nature of softness perception

Jamie Paik, Mustafa Mete, Hwayeong Jeong

Tactile perception of softness serves a critical role in the survival, well-being, and social interaction among various species, including humans. This perception informs activities from food selection in animals to medical palpation for disease detection ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

A Comparative Analysis of Tools & Task Types for Measuring Computational Problem-Solving

Richard Lee Davis, Engin Walter Bumbacher, Jérôme Guillaume Brender

How to measure students' Computational Problem-Solving (CPS) competencies is an ongoing research topic. Prevalent approaches vary by measurement tools (e.g., interactive programming, multiple-choice tests, or programming-independent tests) and task types ( ...

Association for Computing Machinery2024

Generative AI-Enabled Conversational Interaction to Support Self-Directed Learning Experiences in Transversal Computational Thinking

Denis Gillet, Juan Carlos Farah, Adrian Christian Holzer, Abdessalam Ouaazki

As computational thinking (CT) becomes increasingly acknowledged as an important skill in education, self-directed learning (SDL) emerges as a key strategy for developing this capability. The advent of generative AI (GenAI) conversational agents has disrup ...

2024

An immersive virtual reality tool for assessing left and right unilateral spatial neglect

Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

The reported rate of the occurrence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is highly variable likely due to the lack of validity and low sensitivity of classical tools used to assess it. Virtual reality (VR) assessments try to overcome these limitations by pr ...

Wiley2024

From finger animation to full-body embodiment of avatars with different morphologies and proportions

Mathias Guy Delahaye

VR (Virtual Reality) is a real-time simulation that creates the subjective illusion of being in a virtual world. This thesis explores how integrating the user's body and fingers can be achieved and beneficial for the user to experience VR. At the advent of ...

EPFL2023

A Full-Wave Reference Simulator for Computing Surface Reflectance

Mengqi Xia

Computing light reflection from rough surfaces is an important topic in computer graphics. Reflection models developed based on geometric optics fail to capture wave effects such as diffraction and interference, while existing models based on physical opti ...

ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY2023