Perception Engineering
Research group information
Contact information
Research group leader
- Professor
- Professor of Computer Science
Research group description
The Perception Engineering (PE) research team focuses on fundamental issues in virtual reality and robotics. We consider virtual reality broadly as a category that leverages the latest technologies and products in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and telepresence. We consider core robotics problems such as sensing, sensor fusion, planning, learning, and control.
We view VR as a problem of perception engineering, which requires the design, development, and delivery of a perceptual illusion through artificial stimulation of the human senses. Each human sense is capable of such illusions; in the case of vision, we are familiar with many optical illusions. Because VR directly impacts the human body and even disrupts its ordinary functions, it is crucial to understand human physiology, neuroscience, and perception and how they respond to VR technology. We strive to determine perception-based and physiology-based criteria that capture important qualities such as task effectiveness, comfort, and presence. These criteria are used to guide the engineering specifications for VR systems. Typical challenges are viewpoint movement, display artifacts, rendering methods, interaction mechanisms, distributed computation, and limitations of wireless communication.
Perception engineering involves the forward engineering of VR systems with the tight integration of low-level human considerations, which are essentially obtained via reverse engineering (we did not engineer ourselves). Based on current academic fields, this requires a highly interdisciplinary approach; however, one day perception engineers might emerge, who are specifically trained in methodologies based on the science of perception. This would follow a similar path as existing engineering fields. Civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering derive from physics. Chemical and biological engineering derive from chemistry and biology, respectively. Likewise, perception engineering should derive from perceptual psychology and related fields of physiology, medicine, and neuroscience, while also building upon existing engineering principles.