Category:

GamesForHealth2012

6/18/2012

I attended and presented at GamesForHealth 2012 in Boston last week. It was a great experience and I came back to LA with lots of exciting ideas and chances for collaborations. For me it was great to see the different concepts and models of how researchers, developers and clinicians turn "serious" applications into something meaningful. While my personal projects not necessarily can be classified as games, even simulations can touch users and patients at a deeper level that is relevant to them.
Exciting times...!

A summary of the 2012 GFH conference can be found here.

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Darpa - ICT Project featured at Wired.com

4/21/2012

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Please find this Wired.com article on our combined effort across ICT and with Cogito below. The project aims to push the limits on intelligent virtual agents, user sensing, telemed applications and much much more. Regardless of what the article might convey, SimCoach and SimSensei are not intended as virtual therapists. They are intended to provide information, first assessment and guide the service members who are in need of therapy to the approriate resources and therapists.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/darpa-virtual-therapy/

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Afraid of Spiders? Phobia treatment with Augmented Reality Spiders

3/22/2012

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The folks at the HITLab New Zealand, my former research lab, have created an amazing tool for the potential treatment of spider phobia. Andreas Duenser, Adrian Clark and Sam Corbett-Davies are using a Microsoft Kinect and video-based head-mounted displays to display virtual spiders with amazingly accurate physics interactions. See for yourself (Youtube Link). I can see this technology being used for a variety of phobia treatments and also for physical/occupational therapy for reaching/grasping virtual objects.

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Virtual Office Project

1/10/2012

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Happy New Year!

Today the Kessler Foundation posted a press release about a project that our MedVR group at ICT is working involved in. Skip Rizzo and I went to New Jersey to visit the Kessler Rehab Institute. While Skip was invited for the Estabrook Lecture Series, I installed a prototype of the Virtual Office which our group has been working on for the past months. The application is aiming to assess and train executive functions in a realistic virtual office environment.

Here is the press release:http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/kf-kfa011012.phphttp://www.youtube.com/user/KesslerFoundation#p/u/0/wCPmeFdMafU

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Research Update, June

6/23/2011

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The last 2 months have been quite busy as I have started working at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies and also worked towards finishing my thesis. I'll post some updates on current projects over the next weeks. I try to keep up with responding to emails and questions, but it might take a few days on occasion. If any questions about using Unity and Weebly arise, feel free to email me anytime. I'm still planning to update my video tutorial for Unity3, but it's not top of the priority list right now.
Besides, this blog post by the Unity folks has spread excitement amongst the whole Unity community. Those upcoming features sound absolutely amazing.

I'm off to RehabWeekZurich now, presenting a paper about the rapid development of virtual environments (see publications). Looking forward to seeing familiar faces there (and new people of course).

-Sebas

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Conferences and Thesis

4/2/2011

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It's been pretty quiet around here lately. I've been wrapping up my work at the rehabilitation clinic in Schaufling and I'm now writing my thesis. This is sort of a full-time job by itself which leaves me with little time for other projects. However, I have had another paper accepted for ICVR2011 @ RehabWeekZurich. I'm looking forward to coming back to Europe in late June. In the meantime I'll be attending and presenting at Laval Virtual next week.
Starting on April 20th, I'm off to Los Angeles to work at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Yay!! Inspiring and busy times ahead (besides writing up a thesis...).

Hope to see you around at the conferences.
-Sebas

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Christmas Update

12/25/2010

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Hey folks,

Merry Christmas everyone. I've been hard at work to finish my studies at the Asklepios Rehabilitation Clinic, Schaufling Germany. I have finished testing a prototype of a Virtual Memory Task. It's been a huge success and I'm in the process of submitting a paper for Laval Virtual 2011 (http://www.laval-virtual.org/#Home). I'm looking forward to some feedback and am already planning my next studies. I have tested the application with >40 neurological patients and I'm going to start some single-case studies soon. I intend to use the application as a training tool to accompany patients during their 4-6 week rehabilitation program. Stay tuned and check out the task video here (second prototype).
I also started gathering some EEG data using my Emotiv EPOC brain computer interface. I have some raw EEG data recordings for participants doing visual and verbal memory tasks and also using my Virtual Memory Task. Analyses are on the way! Below you can see the EPOC in action.

-Sebas

VMT participant

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Clinical Trial

10/17/2010

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Quick update: I'm working for my clinical trial in my rehab clinic of choice in the Bavarian Mountains. A stable and fast internet connection is as far from reality as a local winter without snow. Needless to say, it's a pain to update the website with a 56k modem (yes! those still exist).
I'm working long shifts to create 3D models for rehab and I'm already working with 2 intense single-cases and therapists nonstop. It's gonna be such an exciting 6 months. The Emotiv EPOC is working pretty well and I'm gonna test it with participants soonish.
In the meanwhile I got a prize for Best Student Paper for the ICDVRAT in Chile. Cool stuff! :)
Looking forward to the upcoming conferences next year. I'm gonna have huge loads of data to present.

I'll try to throw in an update occasionally, but it's not gonna be too frequent. Possibly a few screenshots of upcoming models and progress on all of my tests and applications. I'm still praying that my patients will be able to handle those applications. It's looking good so far with two very enthuiastic neurology patients. Back to work!

-Sebas

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Emotiv EPOC - Sebas goes Brain-Computer-Interface

8/16/2010

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Quick update before I head over to Chile and Germany. I have just purchased a shiny new brain-computer-interface to capture EEG data and get more insights in my participants'/patients' brain activity, emotional states and arousal states.
This device seems to be the closest to an actual EEG systems with research capabilities, as this allows me to capture raw data from 14 electrodes.
More information can be found here: www.emotiv.com
and for a demo you can take a look at the TEDGlobal event.

I'm excited about those new possibilities.

-Sebas

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Editor Scripting for Data Analysis

7/6/2010

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I finally got around to record a small example of how you can use the Unity editor to analyze data visually and arithmetically. The example is of my most recent experiment about navigation behavior. Doing all calculations of distances and angles within 3D space in the actual testing environment makes just so much more sense than just exporting data and running everything through a statistical program.
I will add a small example project of how to create some custom inspector shortly. In the meanwhile, take a look at using editor scripting for data analysis. HD and low quality videos available.