MRI/Acq.: A Cognitive Sensorium and Visualization Facility at UC-Merced
Project Proposed:
This project, acquiring equipment to build a cognitive sensorium and visualization facility, integrates real-time eye tracking and motion capture devices with a large high-resolution display. Aiming to lead to advances in human cognition, perception and action, image processing, intelligent systems, and human-computer interaction, the infrastructure enables interdisciplinary research on novel computational models of visual parsing, categorization, cognition, and as well as research for motor planning and execution. Aiming to achieve novel computational models for implementing humanlike intelligent systems, the project supports research in understanding visual processing in humans during task execution. The instrumentation is composed of three modules: A . High-resolution immersive screen where virtual scenarios can be simulated for sensing human performances, . Head-mounted eye tracker system for accurately tracking the navigation of the user's visual attention point, and . Full-body occlusion-free inertial motion-capture equipment for capturing the motions of the user during performances. Understanding human-like intelligence is key for the development of seamless and fully integrated attentive user interfaces, affective collaborative work, and many human-computer interaction (HCI) applications needed in the future. Connected to a software architecture dedicated to the motion control and graphical simulation of human-like virtual agents already under development, the equipment supports interdisciplinary research activities such as: . Analyzing the visual parsing of features in images, . Analyzing the interactions between gaze and gestures for describing features and procedures, and . Developing new vision-based motor control algorithms for the coordination of locomotion and reaching during grasping tasks.
Broader Impacts: The infrastructure greatly benefits the newest campus of the UC system. The institution services an underrepresented population where the students are usually first generation college students. The facility provides valuable programming and lab skills that contribute to success in high tech jobs and graduate schools. It also improves instruction and development of courses and enables research for many application domains, including training, delivery of instruction, ergonomics, entertainment, HCI, and education.
