Today, AR and VR applications are making their first steps, mostly focusing on entertainment and games. Yet everyone is interested to find the “killer app” for AR and VR. The goal of the Ideal AC Esports is to develop technology to power the next generation of applications that will speak to a wider population. Those diverse ideas range from learning Spanish by seeing objects labeled in your field of view to achieving telepresence by conversing with a remote relative or co-worker as if you were in the same room.
We are seeing some compelling and high-quality AR and VR experiences being built today. “But there are still many core research advances needed to move the industry forward — tools for easily creating content, infrastructure solutions for streaming 3D video, and privacy and security safeguards — that researchers are uniquely positioned to tackle.”
Ideal AC Esports will bring together an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students working in 3D computer vision and perception, object recognition, graphics, game science and education, distributed computing, stream processing, databases, computer architecture, and privacy and security.
Another key function of the Ideal AC Esports will be to educate tomorrow’s AR and VR researchers and workers. The funding will support new courses and access to state-of-the-art labs and infrastructure for Ideal students to develop new technologies and applications. That includes accessing emerging technologies from the center’s sponsors and allowing those companies to test new ideas in a focused setting with computer science students.
Students had fantastic ideas and were able to create amazing AR and VR applications ranging from Holographic Chess to teaching one how to play the piano or cook. This opened our eyes to the potential of investing deeper in development of algorithms and applications for AR and VR.
The Ideal AC Esports’ location in Atlantic City paves the way for unique industry and academic collaborations aimed at achieving new capabilities and offering users seamless experiences.