Over the past few decades, Mixed Reality has emerged as a technology capable of enriching human perception by generating virtual content that consistently co-exists and interacts with the real world. Although this content can be delivered through any of the senses, vision-based applications have drawn particular attention from the research community. This Mixed Reality modality has proven particularly valuable in guiding users during tasks that require the manipulation and alignment of real and virtual objects. However, correctly estimating the virtual content’s depth remains challenging and frequently leads to inaccurate placement of the objects of interest.
This talk introduces fundamental concepts of visual perception and their relevance during the design and implementation of Mixed Reality applications. It explores how our visual system uses multiple cues to gather information from the environment and estimate the depth of the objects, as well as how reproducing these cues is particularly challenging when creating Mixed Reality experiences. In addition, it demonstrates the relevance of integrating these concepts to enhance the perception of users of this technology. Finally, it showcases how these fundamental concepts can be transferred into medical applications and discuss how they can shape the future of healthcare.
Speaker Biography
Alejandro Martin Gomez is a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Computing Sensing and Robotics at Johns Hopkins University. Before joining Johns Hopkins, Alejandro completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich, from which he graduated summa cum laude. His research interests include the study of fundamental concepts of visual perception and their transferability to medical applications that involve using augmented and virtual reality. His work has been published in some of the most prestigious journals and conferences in these fields, including the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, and the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. Alejandro has also served as a mentor and advisor for several students and scholars at the Technical University of Munich, the Johns Hopkins University, and more recently at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. In addition, he is a member of several editorial activities and has participated as a program committee member of the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in 2016, 2018, and 2021.