We gave poster presentations on four research projects at the Asia Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV) held in Singapore.

• Decoding Emotion from Motion: A Comparison of Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks (ST-GCN) and Human Accuracy
  Miao Cheng, Dylan Dumay, Shoi Higashiyama, Chiahuei Tseng, Taku Komura and Yoshifumi Kitamura
• Friendliness and Hostility in Action: Encoding/Decoding Principles and Cultural Influence
  Zhan Dai, Miao Cheng, Ken Fujiwara, Shoi Higashiyama, Yoshifumi Kitamura, Satoshi Shioiri and Chia-Huei Tseng
• Culture Matters: Performance and Perception of Human-like Body Motion between Taiwan and Japan
  Xiaoyue Yang, Miao Cheng, Ken Fujiwara, Shoi Higashiyama, Yoshifumi Kitamura, Satoshi Shioiri, Chia-Huei Tseng and Yangyang Cai
• Cultural Variance in the Emotion Perception of Body Actions by Asian Performers
  Rongdi Zhang, Miao Cheng, Ken Fujiwara, Shoi Higashiyama, Yoshifumi Kitamura, Satoshi Shioiri and Chia-Huei Tseng

Twenty-nine students from the University of Washington and Pennsylvania State University visited our laboratory as part of the Tohoku University STEM Summer Program 2024. After the lecture by Prof. Kitamura, our students gave a demonstration of their research and enjoyed exchanging ideas with them.

Dr. Andrew Cunningham, Senior Lecturer, Australian Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments, The University of South Australia, visited us and gave us a talk.

UCL (University College London) in the UK and Tohoku University jointly held a workshop on “Exploring the Future of Smell“.

Professor Marianna Obrist from UCL (University College London) visited us and gave us a talk.

The stay was part of a joint research project, A Cross-Cultural Dialogue on the Potential of the Sense of Smell for Health and Wellbeing, which is being funded by matching funds from Tohoku University and University College London.

CHI 2024 (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System) was held in Honolulu, Hawaii. Our lab. made the following three presentations.

• Taichi Murakami, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kotaro Hara, Kazuki Takashima, Yoshifumi Kitamura: SwapVid: Integrating Video Viewing and Document Exploration with Direct Manipulation, Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article No.: 1035, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642515 (Papers).
• Ryota Gomi, Ryo Suzuki, Kazuki Takashima, Kazuyuki Fujita, Yoshifumi Kitamura: InflatableBots: Inflatable Shape-Changing Mobile Robots for Large-Scale Encountered-Type Haptics in VR, Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article No. 423, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642069 (Papers).
• Yuki Onishi, Eiko Onishi, Kazuki Takashima, Yoshifumi Kitamura: Anesth-on-the-Go: Designing Portable Game-based Anesthetic Simulator for Education, Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article No. 45, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650866 (Late-Breaking Work).

Prof. Anatole Lecuyer of INRIA Rennes visited our lab.

After a demonstration by a student, He gave us a talk.

We enjoyed cherry-blossom viewing at Katahira campus.

Prof. Tony Tang of Singapore Management Univerisity visited our lab and gave us a talk.

Mr. Tetsushi Ikeda received the Dean of Engineering Award.

https://www.eng.tohoku.ac.jp/news/detail-,-id,2832.html

Prof. Yoshifumi Kitamura was inducted into the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy.

The award was given “for fundamental contributions to 3D user interfaces and tangible user interfaces for VR.”

https://ieeevr.org/2024/awards/vgtc-awards/

https://www.computer.org/csdl/pds/api/csdl/proceedings/download-article/1WabfIcowjC/pdf

IEEE VR 2024 was held in Orlando, USA.

Mr. Kumpei Ogawa and Mr. Yukai Hoshikawa made oral presentations.

• Kumpei Ogawa, Kazuyuki Fujita, Shuichi Sakamoto, Kazuki Takashima, Yoshifumi Kitamura. Exploring Visual-Auditory Redirected Walking using Auditory Cues in Reality.
• Yukai Hoshikawa, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazuki Takashima, Morten Fjeld, Yoshifumi Kitamura. RedirectedDoors+: Door-Opening Redirection with Dynamic Haptics in Room-Scale VR.

Our paper has been published in the online bulletin of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, the scientific journal of IEEE. Oral presentation will be made at 2024 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2024, March 18-21, Orlando, USA), a top conference on virtual reality technoloies.

• Yukai Hoshikawa, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazuki Takashima, Morten Fjeld, Yoshifumi Kitamura. RedirectedDoors+: Door-Opening Redirection with Dynamic Haptics in Room-Scale VR. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. 10.1109/TVCG.2024.3372105
• Press release: Opening New Doors in the VR World, Literally

INTERACTION2024 was held. Mr. Taichi Murakami and Mr. Chihaya Kamide gave demo presentations.

Oral examination of bachelor thesis was held. Mr. Tetsushi Ikeda, Ms. Yuhui Wang, and Mr. Masahiro Tanaka made oral presentations.

Our paper was published in ACM Transactions on Graphics.

The content will be presented orally at SIGGRAPH 2024, which will be held in Denver, CO, USA, from July 28 to August 1.

• Jiawei Huang, Akito Iizuka, Hajime Tanaka, Taku Komura, Yoshifumi Kitamura:
  Online Neural Path Guiding with Normalized Anisotropic Spherical Gaussians,
  ACM Transactions on Graphics, https://doi.org/10.1145/3649310

Dr Katri Cornelissen of Northumbria University visited our lab and gave us a talk.

We enjoyed a farewell party.

“International Symposium on Rich Telecommunication and Nonverbal Information” was held in hybrid format (RIEC Main Building, Tohoku University + Zoom Webinar).

Mr. Maakito Inoue received Best Presentation Award at the 30th Doctoral Student Presentations held online on December 15.

• 井上 理哲人さん（北村・高嶋研究室 博士後期課程2年）、熊谷 政仁さん（小林・佐藤研究室 博士後期課程3年）、崔 航さん（滝沢研究室 博士後期課程2年）、祢津 知広さん（河野研究室 博士後期課程2年）が第30回博士後期課程学生発表会ベストプレゼンテーション賞に決定