Developing Methods for Remote Guidance on Physical Tasks

The University of South Australia has a PhD scholarship available for students to conduct research into methods for remote guidance on physical tasks. This project aims to explore how new types of remote collaboration experiences can be provided by integrating natural gesture input, eye gaze monitoring and physiological sensing into a wearable Augmented Reality (AR) display. Previous research has shown how wearable computers (such as Microsoft HoloLens) can use live camera streaming and Augmented Reality to enable people to collaborate with remote experts. In this research we explore how we can share a wider range of communication cues between people and so improve the collaboration further.

The PhD project will have two main topics; (1) Developing technology for capturing gaze, head and body motion, gesture, physiological cues and emotions and integrating it into a wearable system to create a more natural remote collaboration experience, (2) Developing a working prototype system that can be experimentally evaluated a research laboratory and also in a real world setting. This will involve collaborating with industrial partners to design collaborative systems that meet their needs. 

This PhD scholarship would be ideal for a student who has an interest in remote collaboration using advanced interface technologies including AR and wearable systems and who has an interest in human interface technology.

The successful candidate will work with Professor Mark Billinghurst from the Empathic Computing Laboratory at the University of South Australia. See www.empathiccomputing.org for more information about the research of the Empathic Computing Lab.

The scholarship is open to domestic and international applicants
The successful recipient should have the following interests and skills:

• an interest in developing collaborative systems
• skills or an interest in Augmented Reality or wearable computing
• an interest in human computer interaction