Deirdre Liu

Okay I have a psych midterm in the morning so this will be a quick update: 1. I know what version of Unreal Engine I'll be using: 4.22.3    I knew this from my independent study, as I know I'm going to be trying to use Optitrack, and they haven't updated their plugins in a while. 2. This version of UE has VR stuff for it, I just haven't looked into it yet 3. I was looking into how to set up a basic scene properly, as well as how to import models in. I should be able to do that by next week. I need to research what headsets Drexel has so that I can look into the requirements for UE and that headset to work. At least, I assume all these headsets work differently. I don't know. That's what these next two weeks are for!

Had my first presentation yesterday! was feeling very sick, so I forgot to mention that I came up with the idea from a paper that was looking at using motion capture/animation to get rid of phantom limbs. Regardless, the feedback I got was helpful! I'm summarizing what I got from the feedback, and quoting the quick notes I typed out during feedback. Annie mentioned a researcher from Penn doing this rubber hand experiment which I'm guessing looked at how the brain adapts quickly. I'm planning on looking for this paper, and maybe reaching out to the researcher for more information: researcher from Penn -> rubber hand experiment in VR:  Rubber Hand in VR Malcolm suggested that as a psychological test, I could see if people would act out stepping off into the void, knowing that 1. they're in VR, and 2. the character they were playing has wings. psychological experiment: two characters, one with and one without wings. Have them try to step off into the void Alex...

Had a brief meeting with Diefenbach today to basically ask if this idea was headed in the realm of possible and if so, direction I could take with research. Good news! It is possible! And he gave me some good ideas where to wander. First off, from how I explained it, I would need some sort of technology to have connect to the engine to make this phantom limb move. This is if I want to do this without controllers, which is a whole other thing. Diefenbach suggested the use of a kinect sensor for a hands free experience, or use a Hololens if I wanted to do this in AR. I'm still leaning towards a VR experience, and also leaning towards using the Optitrack system somehow. Anyway, back to the brain sensor thing. Drexel has some basic sensors, but now that I'm writing this, I don't know if I need these. In any case, I think looking into these sort of research papers may bring me some ideas. I recall from this past SIGGRAPH that there was a paper/poster submitted for a robotic ...

Thanks to some clever scheduling, I have a 4 day weekend thanks to the holiday. So I emailed Diefenbach about talking about my idea. So For now I'm going to set aside research, as much as it probably pains multiple people to hear that. The good news of this short break is that I may have an opportunity to work on skills that could be useful towards this project as an actual Master's thesis. I'll leave you in suspense now.

I was looking up some information on Unreal Engine for my mocap independent study, and it got me thinking, how would I go about developing this project? I think it's obvious I should use a game engine, and at the moment the industry is leaning towards UE, so I guess that's what I can use. When I actually make this project, I imagine I'll be using a newer version of the engine, but I think for the purposes of this class I can get away with using a currently available version. Then I need to think about which headset/system to use. I'm not terribly familiar with how each headset differs, but I know it makes a difference. So that's something to research as well. At my current knowledge level, it makes sense to me to use a set up that requires controllers, though, I think it'd be cool to implement mocap gloves instead to give more realism to this idea. Of course I actually need to develop this idea further and actually get it approved by Diefenbach. Probably s...

During class yesterday I was looking up Virtual Reality projects to get a better idea of what is out there, and perhaps find some research done on this strange topic of mine. Ended up looking up VR games but before that, I found a few art installations and exhibits that use VR to enhance user experience. Here are the notes from that (sparse as they are): https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jakob-kudsk-steensen-vr-1748265   Using VR to show a dead birdos environment   https://www.minnpost.com/artscape/2020/01/a-virtual-reality-experience-at-studio-z-1917-opening-at-the-lagoon/ VR used to experience other time periods or places    https://www.thenationalherald.com/278839/an-art-museum-you-can-visit-from-the-hospital   VR museum Here are the games I watched the trailers for to get an idea of game play: Vacation Simulator, Arizona Sunshine, Blood and Truth, Space Pirate Trainer, No Man's Sky, Lone Echo, Vader Immortal, Virtual Virtual Reality, Fantast...

Inspiration has hit! After two days of pretending I don't have to do research, I finally sat down and did some more digging into mocap and other combinations of interest. When I looked up "Motion capture and prosthetics" I came across a paper that at a glance was explaining the project was to use motion capture to abstract phantom limbs from a feeling to a visual animation. So this got me thinking. I recalled Malcolm's suggestion for creating wacky creatures and getting people to react to them. Diefenbach didn't see much potential in this project, nor did I at that current state, but that percolated in the back of my head until I read this article. It's a well known fact that humans used to have tails. We also like to fantasize about having wings to fly, or have additional limbs to make our lives easier. So why not make that a reality, in virtual reality (cue bad pun music)? Here's my rambled thoughts on the matter: project using mocap that som...

Spent some time (not undivided) to see what I could have missed during my last search for mocap topics. From this day of research, it appears mocap is used a lot as a supplementary, or helper part of studies when it comes to psychology. Makes sense, and I think that's the happy medium I'm going to get between these two beloved topics. Some studies that stood out to me: Mocap used to see how Autism spectrum disorder individuals emote compare to unaffected individuals, using mocap to see if violent tendencies are reduced compared to when regular controls are used (ex. xbox controller vs. Wii remote), and using mocap to analysis musical performances in a less intrusive way. Those are the sort of studies I think I should be moving towards. I think my mind set is in finding a topic that is completely balanced between mocap and psychology, whereas it might be more productive to see mocap as a supplement to the study. Also the weather is very nice today. no snow squalls today!

For a day with only 2 easy classes, I'm truly exhausted. Something in my psychology 101 class got me thinking though. As an example for how a case study are conducted, a study into using VR as exposure therapy for Vietnam veterans was used (Virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD Vietnam veterans: A case study (Rothbaum, 1999)). While I'm not looking to do VR for my assignment, it got me thinking, are there studies that could use motion capture that seem unconventional? It's easy to see now that using VR would make sense after the fact, but I don't have that quite yet. So, the key now is to mash two ideas into one. I think I should look further into some problems in sociology and psychology. Perhaps there I could find my happy middle. Oh, and here's a video that's been making me laugh for the past three days:  Kid and Dad Trombone Has nothing to do with this post, but humor is the best cure to any problem.

So, no new research conducted yet, though, I've been contemplating my research from DIGM 501. To get into a bit of how I go about researching, usually I will look at key words or super basic questions pertaining to my topic. From there you can gather other key terms or important people in the subject matter than can further the research. For 501, I looked up three key words/phrases to start: Motion Capture, Kinesics, Micro-Expressions. From that, I gathered a lot of scholarly work. Most didn't end up helping my topic, but for this course, it might. The thing about a lot of Motion Capture research is that the most recent research is looking into markerless capture, which leads into a lot of math magic that quite frankly I don't understand. I'm wondering now what I should look up to see if anyone has used mocap in psychological or sociological studies.

The Winter quarter started yesterday. Certainly was an interesting beginning. BBLearn was down for the majority of the day, Wifi was apparently down for a bit as well. Personally I was feeling all kinds of things. But overall, I think it was a good day. It's good to get back to work, though, I can't say I really stopped working haha. The talk with Diefenbach was productive. Generally, I like to study three subjects: Motion Capture, Sociology, Psychology. Though I feel I'm professionally moving towards Motion Capture, I'd like to see if I can use this class to explore a subject outside this range and move towards the latter of the two interests.  It was recommended to perhaps find a way to combine all the interests into one topic. I too have pondered this, but I find it difficult to justify using MoCap in the ideas I formulate. Additionally, I did confess that I'm not sure if I'm terribly interested in continuing to pursue a Master's degree. But I ...