Team Champignon (first-year students Kosuke Sato, Hikaru Takatori, and Jun Nishida) wins first prize overall in the 2014 International Collegiate Virtual Reality Contest
A team formed by EMP students with an interest in artificial intelligence and virtual reality (EMP first-year students Kosuke Sato, Hikaru Takatori, and Jun Nishida) took part in the 2014 International Collegiate Virtual Reality Contest (IVRC) held May-October 2014 by the Virtual Reality Society of Japan.
The IVRC is a technological and artistic competition in which contestants plan, produce, and exhibit interactive works. As a result of daily discussion of topics including the user experience that should be provided, what makes user interaction enjoyable, and what kind of new user interface should be developed, the team entered a work titled “Childhood.”
This work is an innovative bodily transformation device with a hood, used to help adults feel what it is like to have the body of a child, reproducing the essence of the world and experiences that only children can encounter, such as the pressures of the world, the difficulty of grabbing things, and the excitement of standing on tiptoes to peer over an obstacle. By using visual transformation and an exoskeleton on the fingers to reproduce a physically restricted body to help adults understand the perceptions of children, it provides a view of the world from a new perspective.
After four stages of screening, the entry scored highly for its concept, technical innovation, and social utility, receiving the overall first prize as the best of more than 100 entries, the IVRC Award in Laval Virtual including sending the entry to Laval Virtual, an international virtual reality exposition held in France, and the corporate sponsor’s prize. The final screening was held in conjunction with Digital Content EXPO 2014, organized by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, where Childhood was voted the second most popular work thanks to the support of numerous attendees.
This work is the result of students from laboratories in different fields coming together to demonstrate their own specialized abilities to the maximum extent through planning, designing, and implementing the project. They plan to further polish the work in preparation for its entry to Laval Virtual.
I was in charge of the concept and UX design, design and implementation of the finger exoskeleton that is one part of realizing the physical transformation, and our team’s presentation and visual identify. The opportunity to think about the meaning and form of this project, which began in a spirit of playfulness, from a point of view that differed completely from that of my everyday research was very refreshing, and I think the process of building the project was a good opportunity to learn new methods of expression. Even though our approach was playful, in designing the actual user interface it took a very large amount of time and effort until we could realize it, through the processes of measurement and analysis of physical movement, simulation testing, and 3D CAD design just like in regular research. I am very happy that this project has been regarded so highly for its novelty and utility that we have been able to enter it to an international exhibition, and at the same time I want to polish it up to a degree of finish suited to a work representing the Program. I was in charge of the concept and UX design, design and implementation of the finger exoskeleton that is one part of realizing the physical transformation, and our team’s presentation and visual identify. The opportunity to think about the meaning and form of this project, which began in a spirit of playfulness, from a point of view that differed completely from that of my everyday research was very refreshing, and I think the process of building the project was a good opportunity to learn new methods of expression. Even though our approach was playful, in designing the actual user interface it took a very large amount of time and effort until we could realize it, through the processes of measurement and analysis of physical movement, simulation testing, and 3D CAD design just like in regular research. I am very happy that this project has been regarded so highly for its novelty and utility that we have been able to enter it to an international exhibition, and at the same time I want to polish it up to a degree of finish suited to a work representing the Program.
We formed our team of three people in April of this year, spending about half a year on stages form planning through production and demonstration of the project. I am so happy that we were able to win the overall first prize, the Laval Virtual Prize, and the Christie Digital Technologies Prize as a result. I think that this is a work that can be enjoyed by members of the general public as well, not just regarded highly by the judges. This is shown by the way is was placed second in the voting for a prize awarded by general attendees. “Childhood” was not restricted to the IVRC alone but is also being experienced by many people from around the world at Laval Virtual, and I hope we can communicate the vision of this project in a way that will contribute something to the real world.
I have been in charge of design and implementation of the physical transformation system that transforms the point of view of an adult to that of a child while maintaining natural physical movement ever since our entry passed the first written screening process. During the process of refining our implementation ideas, our discussions returned repeatedly to the concepts and significance that we wanted to realize through this project. While when discussions become heated it takes longer to reach a conclusion, it was very enjoyable to move forward as a team on goal-oriented development based on a clear vision, and I felt so happy to see the ideas that each of us brought to the table take concrete form. I would like to continue improving the experience toward the next international exhibition without being satisfied with the evaluation that the project received in the recent contest, while also being grateful to be in an environment that can provide such valuable experiences.
Related URL
CHILDHOOD HP：http://childhoodproject.org
IVRC HP：http://ivrc.net/2014/
Photo reports of IVRC2014 at Tokyo：https://media.dmm-make.com/item/2687/
Media releases information
【DC EXPO TV】
October 26, 2014 (Sun.)4:00pm-4:20pm
http://www.Ustream.tv/recorded/54501195
【SENSORS, Nippon Television】
November 3, 2015 (Sat.)1:50am-2:20am
http://www.sensors.jp/topics/expo_2014.html
【Ouest France】
http://www.ouest-france.fr/laval-virtual-2015-deux-projets-reperes-tokyo-et-vancouver-2992859