As an ACM Distinguished Speaker, Professor Quigley was recently invited to deliver a series of lectures in New Zealand on “Novel Interactions in Augmented Reality” and “Discreet Computing” at the “Magic Leap Workshop” (a.k.a. Augmented Reality Summer School February 11th – 15th, 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand). To thank the summer school participants, SACHI sponsored a prize (from the Weta Workshop), which Aaron gave to three teams at the AR Summer School.
 

During this time Aaron made a further trip to Wellington to deliver a lecture in the University of Wellington and to visit various people in Weta. And after his return Aaron selected three projects that gave him the most “joy” in the short time he was able to experience them. These projects included “Save the Jarkies” in which you really do care not to squish your digital friends, “Biofeedback Meditation” where you can grow your own personal zen Garden which might flourish or perish based on your EEG data and one game which employed a 3d printed cross-bow which elegantly connected the digital with the physical. However, Aaron did note that all the teams produced excellent demonstrations of their AR and Empathic AR applications.
Existing research in SACHI has explored Ubiquitous User Interfaces, Novel Interactions and Visualisation. And we suggest that mixed reality which can take account of real world environments and objects will provide more potential for novel interactions, such as providing passive haptic feedback, object learning, natural wall borders or table surfaces for game physics. Our view of mixed reality is that it should inter-connect the digital with the physical and will harness knowledge of augmented and virtual reality, tangible user interfaces, visualisation, radar sensing, computer vision, wearable computing, discreet computing, ambient and ubiquitous computing. Many of the topics we are exploring here everyday in St Andrews.
Congratulations to all the summer school participants in New Zealand from everyone in SACHI in Scotland! Our involvement in this summer school continues our group’s tradition of both running and participating in such important events.