Eyal Ofek

Established: May 4, 2017

  The user of Virtual Reality, may find himself in different virtual worlds, such as a spy game (middle) or a space simulator(right) , yet they all give him tangible feedback using the same physical geometry in the real world (left). We propose a class of passive haptics that we call Sparse Haptic Proxy: a set of geometric primitives that simulate touch feedback in elaborate virtual reality scenes. Unlike previous passive haptics that replicate the…

Established: March 2, 2016

Room2Room is a life-size telepresence system that leverages projected augmented reality to enable co-present interaction between two remote participants. We enable a face-to-face conversation by performing 3D capture of the local user with color + depth cameras and projecting their virtual copy into the remote space at life-size scale. This creates an illusion of the remote person’s presence in the local space, as well as a shared understanding of verbal and non-verbal cues (e.g., gaze).

Established: January 1, 2016

We present a novel approach for extending the input space around unmodified mobile devices. Using built-in front facing cameras of unmodified handheld devices, GlassHands estimates hand poses and gestures through reflections in sunglasses, ski goggles or visors. Thereby, GlassHands creates an enlarged input space, rivaling input reach on large touch displays. We introduce the idea along with its technical concept and implementation. We demonstrate the feasibility and potential of our proposed approach in several application…

Established: October 5, 2015

We propose a method that extends a given depth image into regions in 3D that are not visible from the point of view of the camera. The algorithm detects repeated 3D structures in the visible scene and suggests a set of 3D extension hypotheses, which are then combined together through a global 3D MRF discrete optimization. A collaboration with Simon Korman and Prof. Shai Avidan of Tel Aviv University.

Established: July 1, 2015

Publications Hrvoje Benko, Christian Holz, Mike Sinclair, and Eyal Ofek NormalTouch and TextureTouch: High-fidelity 3D Haptic Shape Rendering on Handheld Virtual Reality Controllers. In Proc. of ACM UIST 2016. PDF Video     Mahdi Azmandian, Mark Hancock, Hrvoje Benko, Eyal Ofek, and Andrew Wilson. Haptic Retargeting: Dynamic Repurposing of Passive Haptics for Enhanced Virtual Reality Experiences. In Proc. of ACM CHI 2016. 

RoomAlive is a proof-of-concept prototype that transforms any room into an immersive, augmented, magical entertainment experience. RoomAlive presents a unified, scalable approach for interactive projection mapping that dynamically adapts content to any room. Users can touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that seamlessly co-exists with their existing physical environment.

Established: October 1, 2014

The RoomAlive Toolkit is an open source SDK that enables developers to calibrate a network of multiple Kinect sensors and video projectors. The toolkit also provides a simple projection mapping sample that can be used as a basis to develop new immersive augmented reality experiences similar to those of the IllumiRoom and RoomAlive research projects. The RoomAlive Toolkit is provided as open source under the MIT License. The code is available for download at GithHub: https://github.com/Kinect/RoomAliveToolkit.…

Established: January 4, 2013

IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept system from Microsoft Research. It augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience.         Read the CHI 2013 Best-Paper: IllumiRoom: Peripheral Projected Illusions for Interactive Experiences (7.6 MB .pdf) IllumiRoom uses a Kinect for Windows camera and a projector to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment we live in allowing us to…

Established: January 1, 2011

Face to face or remote conversations can sometimes be challenging, be it for the language barriers or because of lack of topics that may keep a conversation smoothly flowing. We look at technology solutions to help enhance conversations across a number of projects, including translating utterances seamlessly from one language to another and helping people find conversation topics of mutual interest based on prior context or existing context on the internet.