SCA 2022 - Keynote by Steven LaValle: The Path to Perception Engineering

This talk starts with some motivational background from my own research on robot planning algorithms to the development of the Oculus Rift. This path has led us to propose that virtual reality (VR), and parts of other fields involving sensing and perception, can be reframed as perception engineering, in which the object being engineered is the perceptual illusion itself, and the physical devices that achieve it are auxiliary. This talk will report on our progress toward developing mathematical foundations that attempt to bring the human-centered sciences of perceptual psychology, neuroscience, and physiology closer to core engineering principles by viewing the design and delivery of illusions as a coupled dynamical system. The system is composed of two interacting entities: The organism and its environment, in which the former may be biological or even an engineered robot. Our vision is that the research community will one day have principled engineering approaches to design, simulation, prediction, and analysis of sustained, targeted perceptual experiences. It is hoped that this direction of research will offer valuable guidance and deeper insights into VR, robotics, graphics, and possibly the biological sciences that study perception.

Steven M. LaValle is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, in Particular Robotics and Virtual Reality, at the University of Oulu. Since 2001, he has also been a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. He has also held positions at Stanford University and Iowa State University. His research interests include robotics, virtual and augmented reality, sensing, planning algorithms, computational geometry, and control theory. In research, he is mostly known for his introduction of the Rapidly exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm, which is widely used in robotics and other engineering fields. In industry, he was an early founder and chief scientist of Oculus VR, acquired by Facebook in 2014, where he developed patented tracking technology for consumer virtual reality and led a team of perceptual psychologists to provide principled approaches to virtual reality system calibration, health and safety, and the design of comfortable user experiences. From 2016 to 2017 he was Vice President and Chief Scientist of VR/AR/MR at Huawei Technologies, Ltd. He has authored the books Planning Algorithms, Sensing and Filtering, and Virtual Reality. He currently leads an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council on the Foundations of Perception Engineering. More information: http://lavalle.pl